Gemini CLI

I love how fragmented Google's Gemini offerings are. I'm a Pro subscriber, but I now learn I should be a "Gemini Code Assist Standard or Enterprise" user to get additional usage. I didn't even know that existed! As a run of the mill Google user I get a generous usage tier but paying them specifically for "Gemini" doesn't get me anything when it comes to "Gemini CLI". Delightful!

Anthropic is the same. Unless it has changed within the last few months, you can subscribe to Claude but if you want to use Claude Code it'll come out of your "API usage" bucket which is billed separately than the subscription.

Some jerk has learned that we prefer CLI things and has come to the conclusion that we should therefore pay extra for them.

Workaround is to use their GUI with some MCPs but I dislike it because window navigation is just clunky compared to terminal multiplexer navigation.

Isn't that a bit like saying that gasoline should be sold as a fixed price subscription rather than a usage based scheme where long distance truckers pay more than someone driving < 100 miles per week?

A ChatBot is more like a fixed-price buffet where usage is ultimately human limited (even if the modest eaters are still subsidizing the hogs). An agentic system is going to consume resources in much more variable manner, depending on how it is being used.

> Some jerk has learned that we prefer CLI things and has come to the conclusion that we should therefore pay extra for them

Obviously these companies want you to increase the amount of their product you consume, but it seems odd to call that a jerk move! FWIW, Anthropic's stated motivation for Claude Code (which Gemini is now copying) was be agnostic to your choice of development tools since CLI access is pretty much ubiquitous, even inside IDEs. Whether it's the CLI-based design, the underlying model, or the specifics of what Claude Code is capable of, they seem to have got something right, and apparently usage internal to Anthropic skyrocketed just based on word of mouth.

Claude desktop editing files and running commands via the desktop commander MCP is pretty much equivalent functionality wise to Claude Code. I can set both of them to go, make tea, and come back to see that they're still cranking after modifying several files and running several commands.

It's just a UI difference.