Gemini CLI Unveils Pre-Configured Monitoring Dashboards
Understanding how tools are actually used is no longer optional. For teams shipping fast, observability is what separates guesswork from informed decisions. When a CLI becomes part of daily workflows, visibility into usage, performance, and adoption suddenly matters a lot. That’s where the latest Gemini CLI update lands.

Google has introduced a major telemetry upgrade that makes it much easier to see what’s happening inside Gemini CLI usage across a team. The update focuses on pre-configured Google Cloud Monitoring dashboards and a simpler way to export telemetry data, all built on OpenTelemetry. The result is faster insights with far less setup.

This guide walks through what’s new, how the dashboards work, and how to unlock deeper analysis using raw telemetry data. Whether you’re tracking adoption, performance, or cost patterns, these tools give you a clear starting point and room to go deeper when needed.

1. Pre-Configured Dashboards for Instant Insights

The biggest quality-of-life improvement is the new set of ready-made dashboards inside Google Cloud Monitoring. These dashboards work out of the box and require no custom queries, making them ideal for teams that want immediate visibility without extra setup.

Once telemetry is enabled and exported, the dashboard appears under Google Cloud Monitoring Dashboard Templates as Gemini CLI Monitoring. From there, you can quickly see how the CLI is being used across your organization.

Key metrics include:

  • Monthly and Daily Active Users
  • Total number of installs
  • Lines of code added and removed
  • Token consumption
  • API and tool call activity

These views give product leads and engineering managers a fast, high-level picture of adoption and operational health with zero friction.

2. Advanced Analysis Using Raw OpenTelemetry Data

While dashboards cover the overview, deeper questions require raw data. With telemetry enabled, Gemini CLI exports detailed logs and metrics that can be explored directly in the Google Cloud Console.

This is where analysis becomes more flexible and precise. You can answer questions like:

  • How heavily is Gemini CLI used across the team, using user.email?
  • How reliable is the tool, based on status_code?
  • Who are the power users, measured by input_tokens and output_tokens?
  • Which command types consume the most budget?
  • Who are the top 10 most active users?

This level of granularity makes it possible to optimize cost, spot adoption gaps, and understand real usage behavior rather than relying on assumptions.

3. Why OpenTelemetry Matters Here

All of this is built on OpenTelemetry, the industry-standard, vendor-neutral observability framework. OpenTelemetry provides a unified way to collect metrics, logs, and traces without locking you into a single platform.

For Gemini CLI users, that brings several advantages:

  • Compatibility with Google Cloud, Jaeger, Prometheus, Datadog, and other backends
  • Metrics and logs that follow the GenAI OpenTelemetry convention
  • Consistent data formats across your tooling
  • Future-proof observability as platforms evolve
  • No vendor lock-in

This makes Gemini CLI telemetry flexible enough to fit into existing observability stacks while staying portable long-term.

4. Exporting Telemetry to Google Cloud in Three Steps

The export process has been simplified significantly. You can now send Gemini CLI telemetry directly to Google Cloud in three straightforward steps, without setting up intermediate collectors.

The official Gemini CLI telemetry guide covers this in detail, but the flow looks like this:

  • Set your Google Cloud project ID so telemetry knows where to land
  • Authenticate with Google Cloud, ensuring the correct IAM roles and APIs are enabled
  • Enable direct GCP exporters via OpenTelemetry by updating your .gemini/settings.json

The new direct exporter removes the need for an OTLP collector entirely, reducing setup complexity and speeding up time to insight.

While the pre-configured dashboards provide a strong starting point, the raw OpenTelemetry data remains available for deeper customization. You can build custom dashboards, define alerts, and generate tailored reports inside Google Cloud Monitoring based on your specific needs.

Just make sure IAM permissions and APIs are correctly configured, especially when using direct exporters. Misconfigurations can prevent telemetry from appearing. Keeping an eye on the official Gemini CLI telemetry documentation helps ensure everything stays aligned with best practices.

Overall, this update marks a meaningful step forward for Gemini CLI observability. Between instant dashboards, detailed raw data, and a simplified export process, teams now have real visibility into how the CLI is used and where it can be optimized. It’s a practical improvement that turns telemetry from an afterthought into a useful, everyday tool.

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