gemini.yml

Gemini CLI question-answering bot. Replies to @gemini and @gemini-cli mentions in issues, issue comments, PR review comments, and PR reviews, and also runs unattended on workflow_dispatch and schedule events.

Scope: it answers, it does not edit

Read this before treating it as the Gemini counterpart to claude.yml. This workflow reads a thread and posts a reply. It does not edit files, commit, push, or open pull requests: there is no PR-branch checkout, no issue-branch creation, and no push step, so anything written to the runner’s working tree is discarded at cleanup. Its permissions say the same thing — contents: read, not write — and the GitHub tools it is given are scoped to reading the thread and commenting.

When a request needs a code change, it replies with the change rather than making it. Bringing it to claude.yml’s agent parity is tracked in gha#367; a half-built version that silently strands commits would be worse than an honest answerer.

It does borrow claude.yml’s shape where the two genuinely overlap. A mention that appears inside a code block or a blockquote does not wake the agent, because the body is re-tested with detect-bot-mention rather than trusted from the caller’s contains() pre-filter. An @gemini review mention is routed to the dedicated reviewer (gemini-code-review.yml) instead of being answered in place.

Requires a GEMINI_API_KEY secret.

Inputs

Input	Type	Default	Description
setup-r	boolean	true	Install R before running Gemini CLI.
install-quarto	boolean	false	Install Quarto so Gemini CLI can render .qmd files.
apt-packages	string	''	Extra apt packages to install before setup.
pip-packages	string	''	Python packages to install with pip3.
checkout-submodules	boolean	false	Check out git submodules.
prompt-addendum	string	''	Extra prompt instructions appended to the Gemini CLI prompt.
gemini-model	string	'gemini-2.5-flash'	Model passed to run-gemini-cli.
review-workflow-file	string	'gemini-code-review.yml'	Caller-repo workflow file dispatched on @gemini review mentions.

Secrets

Secret	Required	Description
GEMINI_API_KEY	no	Gemini API key. Without it the run reaches Gemini CLI and fails there.
SUBMODULES_TOKEN	no	Token used to check out private submodules.

Permissions

Grant contents: read, pull-requests: write, issues: write, id-token: write, and actions: write (the last so an @gemini review mention can dispatch the review workflow). contents stays read-only deliberately — see the scope note above.

Example

# Copy to .github/workflows/gemini.yml in your repo.
name: Gemini CLI

on:
  issue_comment:
    types: [created]
  pull_request_review_comment:
    types: [created]
  issues:
    types: [opened, assigned]
  pull_request_review:
    types: [submitted]

jobs:
  gemini:
    if: |
      (github.event_name == 'issue_comment' && (contains(github.event.comment.body, '@gemini') || contains(github.event.comment.body, '@gemini-cli')) && contains(fromJSON('["OWNER","MEMBER","COLLABORATOR"]'), github.event.comment.author_association))
    permissions:
      contents: read
      pull-requests: write
      issues: write
      id-token: write
      actions: write
    uses: Morrison-Lab/gha/.github/workflows/gemini.yml@v2
    secrets:
      GEMINI_API_KEY: ${{ secrets.GEMINI_API_KEY }}
    # with:
    #   setup-r: false               # skip R setup for non-R repos
    #   install-quarto: true         # render .qmd files
    #   gemini-model: gemini-2.5-flash
    #   review-workflow-file: gemini-code-review.yml   # dispatched on `@gemini review`

See the examples/ directory for the full caller stub (gemini.yml), which carries the complete trusted-author if: for all four events.