Gemini CLI is Google's open-source AI agent for the terminal, powered by the Gemini model family. It reads MCP server configuration from ~/.gemini/settings.json using the standard mcpServers root key and the same field names as Claude Desktop, making it one of the most straightforward apps to configure. Servers declared in the config are available to Gemini CLI as tools it can invoke during multi-step agentic tasks — reading files, querying APIs, running searches, and more. Because the format is a near-passthrough of the canonical schema, configs can be copied directly from Claude Desktop with minimal or no changes. The getmcp CLI detects Gemini CLI automatically by checking for the ~/.gemini directory and merges server entries without touching your existing settings.
The fastest way to install MCP servers in Gemini CLI is with the getmcp CLI:
npx @getmcp/cli add <server-id>Example configuration for the github server:
{
"mcpServers": {
"brave-search": {
"command": "npx",
"args": [
"-y",
"@brave/brave-search-mcp-server"
],
"env": {
"BRAVE_API_KEY": ""
}
}
}
}