gemini-cli

Chainguard Container for gemini-cli

Minimalist Wolfi-based Gemini CLI image for running Google's Gemini AI agent in your terminal.

Chainguard Containers are regularly-updated, secure-by-default container images.

Download this Container Image

For those with access, this container image is available on cgr.dev:

docker pull cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/gemini-cli:latest

Be sure to replace the ORGANIZATION placeholder with the name used for your organization's private repository within the Chainguard Registry.

Compatibility Notes

The gemini-cli image provides a containerized version of Google's Gemini CLI, with the following characteristics:

• Built on Wolfi with a minimal footprint and fewer CVEs
• Does not run as root by default
• Provides an alternative to the npm-based installation (npm install -g @google/gemini-cli)

Image configuration (entrypoint, cmd) is based on the upstream image us-docker.pkg.dev/gemini-code-dev/gemini-cli/sandbox:0.1.1. The entrypoint script (docker-entrypoint.sh) is sourced from the official Node.js Docker images. Upstream environment variables (SANDBOX, CLI_VERSION, NPM_CONFIG_PREFIX) are omitted as they are not required for functionality.

Getting Started

Gemini CLI is an AI-powered command-line tool that brings Google's Gemini AI directly to your terminal. To use it, you'll need a Google Gemini API key.

Running with an API Key

Set your Gemini API key as an environment variable and run the container:

docker run --rm -e GEMINI_API_KEY=your_api_key cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/gemini-cli:latest gemini -p "Hello, Gemini!"

Interactive Mode

For interactive sessions, run the container with a TTY:

docker run --rm -it -e GEMINI_API_KEY=your_api_key cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/gemini-cli:latest

Checking the Version

docker run --rm cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/gemini-cli:latest gemini --version

Viewing Help

docker run --rm cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/gemini-cli:latest gemini --help

Configuration

The Gemini CLI supports the following environment variables for authentication:

Documentation and Resources

• Gemini CLI GitHub Repository
• Chainguard Academy

What are Chainguard Containers?

Chainguard's free tier of Starter container images are built with Wolfi, our minimal Linux undistro.

All other Chainguard Containers are built with Chainguard OS, Chainguard's minimal Linux operating system designed to produce container images that meet the requirements of a more secure software supply chain.

The main features of Chainguard Containers include:

• Minimal design, without unnecessary software bloat
• Daily builds to ensure container images are up-to-date with available security patches
• High quality build-time SBOMs attesting to the provenance of all artifacts within the image
• Verifiable signatures provided by Sigstore
• Reproducible builds with Cosign and apko (read more about reproducibility)

For cases where you need container images with shells and package managers to build or debug, most Chainguard Containers come paired with a development, or -dev, variant.

In all other cases, including Chainguard Containers tagged as :latest or with a specific version number, the container images include only an open-source application and its runtime dependencies. These minimal container images typically do not contain a shell or package manager.

Although the -dev container image variants have similar security features as their more minimal versions, they include additional software that is typically not necessary in production environments. We recommend using multi-stage builds to copy artifacts from the -dev variant into a more minimal production image.

Need additional packages?

To improve security, Chainguard Containers include only essential dependencies. Need more packages? Chainguard customers can use Custom Assembly to add packages, either through the Console, chainctl, or API.

To use Custom Assembly in the Chainguard Console: navigate to the image you'd like to customize in your Organization's list of images, and click on the Customize image button at the top of the page.

Learn More

Refer to our Chainguard Containers documentation on Chainguard Academy. Chainguard also offers VMs and Libraries — contact us for access.

Trademarks

This software listing is packaged by Chainguard. The trademarks set forth in this offering are owned by their respective companies, and use of them does not imply any affiliation, sponsorship, or endorsement by such companies.