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Overview
The Google AI Studio provider gives Hermes direct access to Gemini models through Google's AI Studio API — no OpenRouter proxy. Provider id: gemini. The native provider shipped in version v0.8.0 with automatic models.dev registry integration; version v0.11.0 routed Gemini through the native AI Studio API and added a separate Google Gemini CLI OAuth inference provider plus a Gemini TTS provider. Gemini models matter beyond the main slot: google/gemini-3-flash-preview is the default context-compression summary model, and Gemini Flash via OpenRouter is the default auxiliary model for vision and web summarization.
Characteristics
- Setup:
GOOGLE_API_KEYin~/.hermes/.env— get one at aistudio.google.com/app/apikey.GEMINI_API_KEYis an alias;GEMINI_BASE_URLoverrides the endpoint. - Provider id:
gemini(one of the 28plugins/model-providers/plugins as of version v0.15.0) - Free-tier guard: Gemini free-tier keys are blocked at setup with 429 guidance surfacing (version v0.12.0) — free keys rate-limit too aggressively for agent use; use a paid/billing-enabled key
- Multimodal:
video_analyze— native video understanding — runs on Gemini and compatible multimodal models (version v0.13.0);vision_analyzereturns raw pixels to Gemini as a vision-capable model (v0.14.0) - OAuth alternative: Google Gemini CLI OAuth inference provider (added v0.11.0) for subscription-style auth instead of an API key
- Auxiliary role: default compression summary model is
google/gemini-3-flash-preview; the setup wizard's Context Compression defaults to it
How to Use
# Set the key (auto-saves to ~/.hermes/.env)
hermes config set GOOGLE_API_KEY your-ai-studio-key
# Then pick Gemini in the interactive picker
hermes model
Permanent config in ~/.hermes/config.yaml (same pattern as other providers):
model:
provider: "gemini"
default: "gemini-3-flash-preview"
Use Gemini Flash as the dedicated compression model while a different provider runs the main loop:
compression:
summary_provider: openrouter
summary_model: google/gemini-3-flash-preview
Note: a model id like google/gemini-3-flash-preview is the OpenRouter-format slug; on the native gemini provider, use the bare model name.
Related Entities
- provider openrouter — reaches Gemini models via the aggregator, and is the default path for Gemini-Flash auxiliary tasks
- provider anthropic, provider openai codex — sibling frontier providers
- version v0.8.0 — native provider added; version v0.11.0 — native AI Studio routing + Gemini CLI OAuth; version v0.12.0 — free-tier key block; version v0.13.0 —
video_analyze - model switching
- auxiliary models — where Gemini Flash does most of its work in practice
