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Resources→AI Ecosystems→Google / Gemini

Google / Gemini

Google's AI ecosystem is the biggest in the game. If you already use Gmail, Drive, Chrome, or Android, Gemini is already touching your life whether you know it or not. It powers search, writes emails, generates images, builds apps, runs coding agents, and sits inside a developer platform that connects to everything Google has ever built.

That breadth is both the strength and the problem. There's a lot to sort through. This page focuses on what matters if you're building things. I skip most of the consumer and Workspace integration stuff and go straight to models, coding tools, the developer platform, and the ecosystem around it.

On This Page
The ModelsCoding ToolsThe Developer PlatformOfficial ProductsMedia GenerationDocumentationFree CoursesOfficial GitHub ReposThe Extensions EcosystemCurated Community ListsCommunityPricing

The Models

Gemini 3 Pro is Google's most capable model. It scores 1501 Elo on LMArena, 91.9% on GPQA Diamond, and 81% on MMMU-Pro. It's the default across Google's coding tools and available through third-party tools like Cursor, JetBrains, Cline, and Replit. This is the one you want for serious work.

Gemini 3 Flash is faster and cheaper. It powers the free tier's "Auto" model. Good for high-volume tasks where you don't need the full power of Pro.

Gemini 3 Deep Think is the extended reasoning mode. Chemistry, physics, math, optimization problems. Available to Ultra subscribers. Still rolling out as of early 2026.

Gemma is Google's open-source model family. Same research foundation as Gemini, but you own it. Fine-tune it with your own data, deploy it on your own devices, run it offline. Specialized variants include Gemma 3n (multimodal, edge devices), MedGemma (medical), and SignGemma (sign language). Available through Google AI Edge for mobile, web, and embedded deployment. If you need a model you control completely, this is it.

Nano Banana is Google's name for Gemini's native image generation. Nano Banana Pro adds text rendering in multiple languages, search grounding for factual accuracy, and 3D object manipulation. It shows up in the Gemini app, Slides, and NotebookLM.

All model specs and API details live at ai.google.dev.

Coding Tools

Google has three coding tools and they do different things. This is the most important distinction to understand.

Gemini CLI is an open-source terminal agent with over 94k GitHub stars. It uses Gemini models with a 1 million token context window. Apache 2.0 license. The free tier runs on Gemini 2.5 Pro. It integrates with VS Code (490k+ installs) and has a growing extensions ecosystem. Gemini CLI GitHub Actions (launched February 2026) adds automated issue triage and PR reviews to any repo. Use CLI for interactive coding, research, scripting, and quick tasks. It's Google's answer to Claude Code.

Antigravity is an agentic IDE, forked from VS Code. Google launched it alongside Gemini 3 in November 2025 after acquiring the Windsurf team. It has three surfaces: Editor for synchronous coding, Manager for autonomous agent orchestration, and Browser for automated testing through Computer Use. The agents can plan and execute complex tasks across editor, terminal, and browser without you touching anything. Free public preview on Mac, Windows, and Linux. Still rough around the edges as of January 2026.

Jules is an asynchronous coding agent. You point it at a GitHub repo, tell it what to do, and walk away. It works in cloud VMs. It reads your codebase, writes tests, fixes bugs, builds features, and creates PRs. It uses an AGENTS.md file for project context (same idea as Claude Code's CLAUDE.md). Jules has its own CLI, an API, and GitHub Actions integration for automated workflows like daily security scans. Pricing: Free with limits, Pro gets 100 tasks/day, Ultra gets 300.

Gemini Code Assist is an IDE extension for VS Code and JetBrains. Code completion, analysis, suggestions. Less powerful than the tools above but good for inline help.

Firebase Studio is a cloud-based IDE for full-stack prototyping. AI-assisted coding with Figma integration and automatic Firebase backend provisioning. Good for getting a working app fast.

The short version: Gemini CLI is your terminal assistant. Antigravity is a full IDE replacement with autonomous agents. Jules works in the background on your GitHub repos while you do other things. They complement each other.

The Developer Platform

Google AI Studio is the starting point. Build and test prompts, get API keys, generate full apps from a single prompt in Build mode. It has 10+ interactive starter apps (Video Toys, Gemini OS, GIF Maker, and others). Free. If you're prototyping an idea, start here.

Gemini API has SDKs in Python, Node.js, Go, Java, and Apps Script. It handles text, code, images, video, and audio. Function calling, structured outputs, grounding with Google Search, streaming, and a 1 million token context window. Free tier is generous. Pay-per-token for production, with pricing that varies by model.

Interactions API is new and in public beta. It gives you a unified interface for complex agentic applications that handles interleaved messages, thoughts, and tool calls. The big draw is access to built-in agents like Gemini Deep Research through your own API calls. Works with ADK and A2A.

Agent Development Kit (ADK) is an open-source framework for building AI agents. Python is at v1.0.0 and production-ready. Java is at v0.1.0. It supports workflow agents (sequential, parallel, loop), LLM-driven dynamic routing, multi-agent hierarchies, MCP protocol, and A2A protocol. You can deploy to Vertex AI Agent Engine or run it standalone. It's model-agnostic but optimized for Gemini.

Agent2Agent (A2A) Protocol is an open standard for agent-to-agent communication, now under the Linux Foundation. v0.3.0 spec with gRPC support and signed security. Python SDK available. The idea is that agents built on different frameworks can talk to each other. Over 50 technology partners at launch including Atlassian, Salesforce, SAP, and PayPal, with adoption growing.

Vertex AI is Google Cloud's enterprise ML/AI platform. Gemini models, Agent Engine, custom training, deployment, scaling. It includes the Model Garden with 200+ models, including Claude, Llama, and other third-party models. Useful if you want to compare and deploy different models from one platform. This is the enterprise tier. If you're a solo builder or small team, you probably don't need it yet.

Official Products

Gemini App is Google's main AI chat. 650+ million monthly users. Deep Research generates comprehensive multi-step reports. Canvas handles content creation. Gemini Live is two-way voice conversation. Personal Intelligence (opt-in beta, US) connects your Gmail, Photos, YouTube, and Search history for personalized responses. Image generation with Nano Banana, video generation with Veo 3.1, 65+ languages.

NotebookLM is an AI research tool grounded in your own documents. Upload PDFs, Google Docs, websites, YouTube videos. It has a 1 million token context window. Audio Overviews generate podcast-style summaries of your content. Video Overviews create explainer videos. It also does mind maps, flashcards, infographics, slide decks, and data table extraction. You can set custom goals and personas per notebook. Business tiers include NotebookLM Plus for small teams and NotebookLM Enterprise with VPC-SC compliance and audit trails. I use this for research. It's one of Google's best products.

Gemini in Chrome handles multi-step web tasks through Auto Browse. Booking travel, scheduling appointments, shopping research based on your open tabs. Powered by Gemini 3.

Media Generation

Brief section because most builders won't need this daily, but it's worth knowing what's available.

Nano Banana Pro handles image generation and editing with text rendering, search grounding, and 3D manipulation. Veo 3.1 generates video with realistic textures, camera control, and dialogue with sound effects. Flow is a creative video tool that uses AI credits (1,000/month on Pro, 25,000/month on Ultra). Whisk does image remixing. MusicFX generates audio and music through Google Labs. Google Vids creates AI-powered videos for presentations and business content.

Documentation

Free Courses

  • Gemini for Developers Codelabs - Comprehensive hands-on tutorials. Models, tools, SDK, context window, thinking mode, Search grounding, Maps, Interactions API, image generation, Live API, and more.
  • Getting Started with Gemini CLI Extensions - Hands-on codelab for the extensions framework. Gallery, CLI commands, managing extensions.
  • Google Cloud Skills Boost - Structured learning paths for Gemini and Vertex AI. Includes "Generative AI for Developers" and "Vertex AI Fundamentals." Hands-on labs with completion badges.
  • Google AI Studio starter apps - 10+ interactive examples you can play with and learn from. Video Toys, Gemini OS, GIF Maker, and others.

Official GitHub Repos

The Extensions Ecosystem

The Gemini CLI extensions ecosystem launched in October 2025 with over 1 million developers already using the CLI. Extensions are installable packages that bundle MCP servers, context files, custom slash commands, and playbooks. Install anything with one command: gemini extensions install <github-url>.

Official Extensions Gallery - Browsable catalog ranked by GitHub stars. Google-built, partner, and community extensions all in one place.

Google-built extensions cover 37 repos under the gemini-cli-extensions GitHub org. Cloud Run, GKE, Firestore, AlloyDB, Cloud SQL, BigQuery, Looker, Flutter, Firebase, Code Review, Security scanning, Google Maps Platform, Chrome DevTools, and more.

Conductor is worth calling out specifically. It's Google's extension for structured feature development. You describe what you want built, Conductor plans the implementation, then executes it. Similar to how Claude Code's Plan Mode and skills work. If you're using Gemini CLI for real projects, install this first.

Enterprise partners built official extensions at launch: Stripe, Figma, Postman, Shopify, Snyk, Dynatrace, Elastic, Harness, Atlassian, Canva, Confluent, Sonar, ThoughtSpot, Terraform, Hugging Face, and Redis. This is one area where Google's ecosystem is stronger than Claude's. These aren't community projects. Stripe, Figma, and Shopify built and maintain their own extensions.

Community extensions worth knowing about: gemini-beads (persistent memory), gemini-flow (multi-agent workflows), Agent Squads (agent coordination with Git-native state), Self Command (background commands via tmux), vsync (syncs skills and MCP servers across Claude Code, Cursor, and Gemini CLI), and the Obsidian extension (connects Gemini to your Obsidian vault).

MCP overlap: Gemini CLI supports MCP natively. Extensions can bundle MCP servers. This means the broader MCP ecosystem, the same servers that work with Claude Code, also works here. If you've already set up MCP servers for Claude, they'll work with Gemini CLI too.

Curated Community Lists

Community

Pricing

Consumer plans:

  • Free - Basic Gemini access with daily limits. Gemini 3 Flash.
  • AI Plus ($7.99/month) - More access, 200GB storage.
  • AI Pro ($19.99/month) - Gemini 3 Pro, Deep Research, 2TB storage, Gemini in Workspace apps, NotebookLM upgrades, Gemini Code Assist, Gemini CLI, Jules, and $10/month in Google Cloud credits. Free for college students for one year.
  • AI Ultra ($249.99/month) - Everything maxed out. 30TB storage, Deep Think, Veo 3.1, 25,000 AI credits, highest limits on Antigravity and CLI and Jules, Project Mariner browser agent, $100/month in Cloud credits, YouTube Premium included.

Enterprise:

  • Google Workspace with Gemini for teams.
  • AI Ultra Access for Business add-on.
  • Vertex AI with cloud-based token pricing. HIPAA-eligible with Business Associate Agreement for healthcare workloads.
  • NotebookLM Enterprise with VPC-SC compliance, audit trails, and no model training on your data.

API (Gemini Developer API):

  • Free tier with generous limits. Good enough for prototyping and small projects.
  • Pay-per-token for production. Pricing varies by model (Pro costs more than Flash costs more than Flash-Lite).
  • Costs increase after 200k input tokens on 2.5 Pro.
  • Available through Google AI Studio or Vertex AI.

Current pricing at ai.google.dev/pricing for API rates and one.google.com for consumer plans.

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