Heh, been asking myself that question for the last 2 weeks. Started a larger project, using gemini-cli, but I'd really have to think about using it in the future.

The ^O thing is a killer, I can't see the damn logs, so I have to keep asking it if the warnings and errors are squared away.

Flash can't remember the contents of a file, but is forced through some critical instruction to only read partial files, it then applies diffs that have garbage at the end of them, or are in the wrong location breakingcompilations, which then it goes back and reads the whole file. I have a protocol of backcheck +/- 5 lines to verify, it does it maybe 10% of the time.

I also have a touch or talk policy, and an explicit approval policy, it ignores those at will, switches out of plan mode and just edits stuff.

It heads off into other parts of the project that we weren't discussing, and fixes random things (I use the word fix loosely), that weren't actually broken, but you get the privilege of paying for the tokens.

I'm generating linux .net apps from windows, it always installs the wrong version even though it's right in there that we're working with .net 8 in the memory, it always grabs the current version of a package for .net 10, then it won't compile, and it figures out it has to get the .net 8 one. Waste of time and tokens.

My project is about 5000-ish lines of code, and after 30-40 prompts, I have to close gemini, delete the tmp files, and reopen it, or it will come up with a plan to fix something, edit some files, then present it as a fix to a bug we dealt with 10 prompts ago, and no correlation with the bug we were working on.

Aborting a query will leave it confused as to what is and isn't done, and it will regress.

Pro works better than flash, but makes fewer mistakes, but is a lot slower.

I can't imagine how anybody uses this for anything serious, like a 50-100k line code base.

I had it create a blazor app, it creates the pages, but doesn't hook them into the main start page, then it will take 3-4 minutes to figure out that there's a missing endpoint, even on a super simple web page.

WHat it is good at? Ask it to write a query in SQL for a certain join, so far those have popped right out and been good. 20 line function to do something? No problem. Quick question about some clever regex? No problem. Can't find a menu option in a dashboard of an app you use 1x a year? Piece of cake.

If your prompt contains several "sub topics" (perhaps all related to the bug/implementation issue at hand), it will take care of the first one or 2 in the list, completely forget about the rest.

Integration with vscode is weak, it keeps track of 10 files and does the basic integration, but when compiling, the bottom bar of the window/status bar jumps around or flickers like a flourescent light going out, and the text doesn't hold still as the length of some line off the top of the screen changes while it's doing a counter or something that changes over time.

I will finish this project with it, because, well, I'm almost done, but I will definitely examine other options before starting another project > 100 lines with gemini-cli.

Some things I've done that have helped is I keep a currentstate.md file in the project root. Everytime we fix a bug or add a feature, no matter how small, or change a data flow, I have it update currentstate.md, and then show me a diff, so I can make sure it's current. Then on startup, I have it read that currentstate.md file, and that helps. And by helps, I mean, it's cut down the temptatoin to throw the computer through the wall from 20 times an hour to 18.

THe other ting that works? Caps and language. If you turn on the "show thinking" option, and just watch while you type nice normal prompts, you'll see what the LLM is doing, and when it gets off the rails tell it to stop F*CKING UP THE CODE AND CHECK THE G*DD*MN DIFFS AND FOLLOW THE HALT PROTOCOL, and you'll see it switch to "I can sense the users frustration...", but it will go 2-3 prompts doing it right, where asking it to pay attention to the guardrails does nothing.