Yes, Gemini CLI can read your entire project directory, but only when you explicitly provide access or when you use specific flags that enable directory-wide access. By default, the CLI operates on an explicit permission model where it only accesses files and directories that you specifically reference in your prompts. However, you can enable broader directory access using the --include-all-files flag, which recursively includes all files within the current directory as context for your prompts. This feature leverages Gemini’s massive 1 million token context window to analyze entire project structures simultaneously.
When you grant directory-wide access, Gemini CLI can perform comprehensive analysis across your entire codebase, understanding relationships between different files, dependencies, and architectural patterns. This capability is particularly powerful for tasks like code reviews, architectural analysis, debugging complex issues that span multiple files, or getting oriented with large, unfamiliar codebases. The tool can trace how functions and classes interact across different files, identify potential issues in your project structure, and provide insights that would be difficult to obtain by examining files individually.
The extensive directory access combined with the large context window enables sophisticated use cases like full project documentation generation, comprehensive security audits, migration planning for large codebases, and understanding complex software architectures. However, users should be mindful of the privacy implications when enabling full directory access, especially in environments with sensitive code or proprietary information. The tool provides various configuration options to control the scope of access, including the ability to create custom sandboxes that limit access to specific subdirectories. You can also use .gitignore-style exclusion patterns to prevent certain files or directories from being included in the analysis, giving you fine-grained control over which parts of your project the AI can access while still enabling comprehensive analysis of the areas you choose to share.