Set up Gemini CLI in Earkeep

Two things on your device, and Settings → Agents checks for both:

• Gemini CLI, installed and signed in. The sections below walk through it.
• Node.js 20 or newer, which brings npm and npx with it. Earkeep starts Gemini CLI through an adapter fetched with npx, so without Node the CLI can be installed and signed in and the agent still cannot run.

If you don't have Node yet, install it with Homebrew or from nodejs.org:

brew install node

Then check that both answer, and that the first says 20 or higher:

node --version && npx --version

Earkeep does not install agents. It runs the one you already have, on your own account.

npm install -g @google/gemini-cli

Homebrew works too, if you would rather not install it globally through npm:

brew install gemini-cli

Check it landed with gemini --version. Google's own Gemini CLI repository is the reference for the other routes.

Run gemini once and choose Sign in with Google, then follow the browser flow. That is the simplest route and needs no key.

If you would rather use a key, set it in your shell profile so that Earkeep inherits it. This matters: Earkeep launches agents through your login shell precisely so that the environment they get is the environment your terminal gets, and a key exported only in one open terminal window is not part of that.

export GEMINI_API_KEY="your-key-here"

Earkeep never stores or reads those credentials. They belong to the CLI and to your shell.

1. Open Earkeep and press Settings, at the bottom of the left rail.
2. Go to Agents.
3. The Gemini CLI card should show a green Ready with its version number. A yellow Needs setup lists underneath what is still missing, and a red Not installed means Earkeep could not find the CLI.

Earkeep launches it in the protocol mode Gemini CLI provides:

npx -y @google/gemini-cli --experimental-acp

So this agent needs Node installed. If Node is missing or older than 20, the card turns yellow and says which version to install.

1. Open a saved meeting.
2. In the agent panel, start a New session and pick Gemini CLI and a working directory.
3. Type what you want, or start from one of the suggestion cards, which come from your own prompts in Settings → Templates.

Your other meetings come wired in. Earkeep offers its own MCP server to the session automatically, so the agent can search and read your saved meetings without you configuring anything.

"Not installed", but it works in your terminal. Almost always the path. Earkeep probes through your login shell, so open a fresh terminal window and run gemini --version: if that fails too, the install did not finish wiring itself in.

"Needs setup", asking for Node.js. Install Node.js 20 or newer, or update the one you have (brew upgrade node). Earkeep starts this agent through npx even when you installed the CLI with Homebrew.

It starts but complains about credentials. The key is probably exported in one terminal, not in your shell profile. See the sign-in section above.

No signed-in badge appears. That is expected. Only two agents in the roster expose a reliable non-interactive check, and Gemini CLI is not one of them, so Earkeep treats it as ready once the binary is there.

The protocol mode is marked experimental. It is, by Google and not by us, so it can change between releases. If a session stops starting after an upgrade, that is the first thing to suspect.

• Agents and MCP: why the agent comes to the meeting, not the other way round.
• All Earkeep how-tos.