[Skills] UX Polishing: Transparent feedback and CLI refinements

[NTaylorMullen]

Summary

Polishes the skill management user experience by providing transparent feedback and refining the CLI command defaults.

Details

• Changed the default scope for the gemini skills disable CLI command from user to project (Workspace) to align with common project-specific needs.
• Updated all feedback messages to explicitly include the file paths of the modified settings.json files.
• Implemented caller-managed guidance messages to decouple business logic from the UI:
  • Interactive UI (/skills): Recommends using /skills reload.
  • Non-interactive CLI (gemini skills): Recommends a restart.
• Updated unit tests to verify the new descriptive feedback format and file path reporting.

Related Issues

Part of #15327

How to Validate

• Run the unit tests: npx vitest packages/cli/src/ui/commands/skillsCommand.test.ts packages/cli/src/commands/skills/enable.test.ts packages/cli/src/commands/skills/disable.test.ts
• Manual validation:
  • Run gemini skills disable <name> and verify it defaults to the project scope and shows the file path.
  • Run /skills enable <name> in the interactive UI and verify it mentions all affected scopes with paths and recommends a reload.

Pre-Merge Checklist

• Updated relevant documentation and README (if needed)
• Added/updated tests (if needed)
• Noted breaking changes (if any) - Changed default disable scope.
• Validated on required platforms/methods:
  • MacOS
    • npm run

[gemini-code-assist]

Summary of Changes

Hello @NTaylorMullen, I'm Gemini Code Assist¹! I'm currently reviewing this pull request and will post my feedback shortly. In the meantime, here's a summary to help you and other reviewers quickly get up to speed!

This pull request significantly enhances the user experience for managing skills within the Gemini CLI by providing more transparent and actionable feedback. It refines the default behavior of the disable command to be project-centric and ensures users are clearly informed about which configuration files are affected by their actions, along with appropriate next steps for changes to take effect.

Highlights

• Default Scope Change: The gemini skills disable CLI command now defaults to a project (Workspace) scope instead of user, aligning with typical project-specific skill management.
• Transparent Feedback: All feedback messages for skill management operations now explicitly include the file paths of the settings.json files that were modified.
• Contextual Guidance: Guidance messages are now caller-managed, recommending a /skills reload for interactive UI users and a full restart for non-interactive CLI users.
• Enhanced Test Coverage: Unit tests have been updated to verify the new descriptive feedback format and the accurate reporting of file paths.

Using Gemini Code Assist

The full guide for Gemini Code Assist can be found on our documentation page, here are some quick tips.

Invoking Gemini

You can request assistance from Gemini at any point by creating a comment using either /gemini <command> or @gemini-code-assist <command>. Below is a summary of the supported commands on the current page.

Feature	Command	Description
Code Review	/gemini review	Performs a code review for the current pull request in its current state.
Pull Request Summary	/gemini summary	Provides a summary of the current pull request in its current state.
Comment	@gemini-code-assist	Responds in comments when explicitly tagged, both in pull request comments and review comments.
Help	/gemini help	Displays a list of available commands.

Customization

To customize Gemini Code Assist for GitHub experience, repository maintainers can create a configuration file and/or provide a custom code review style guide (such as PEP-8 for Python) by creating and adding files to a .gemini/ folder in the base of the repository. Detailed instructions can be found here.

Limitations & Feedback

Gemini Code Assist may make mistakes. Please leave feedback on any instances where its feedback is incorrect or counter productive. You can react with 👍 and 👎 on @gemini-code-assist comments. If you're interested in giving your feedback about your experience with Gemini Code Assist for Github and other Google products, sign up here.

You can also get AI-powered code generation, chat, as well as code reviews directly in the IDE at no cost with the Gemini Code Assist IDE Extension.

Footnotes

1. Review the Privacy Notices, Generative AI Prohibited Use Policy, Terms of Service, and learn how to configure Gemini Code Assist in GitHub here. Gemini can make mistakes, so double check it and use code with caution. ↩

[gemini-code-assist]

Code Review

This pull request refines the user experience for skill management by improving feedback messages and adjusting CLI defaults. The changes make the tool more transparent by including file paths in status messages and provide context-specific guidance for applying changes (restarting the CLI vs. reloading skills in the interactive UI). The default scope for disabling skills is also thoughtfully changed to project.

The implementation is solid, but I've identified an area of code duplication in the CLI command handlers for enable and disable. I've left a comment with a suggestion to refactor this into a shared utility to improve long-term maintainability. Overall, these are great UX improvements.

[github-actions]

Size Change: +580 B (0%)

Total Size: 22.3 MB

ℹ️ View Unchanged

Filename	Size	Change
./bundle/gemini.js	22.2 MB	+580 B (0%)
./bundle/sandbox-macos-permissive-closed.sb	1.03 kB	0 B
./bundle/sandbox-macos-permissive-open.sb	890 B	0 B
./bundle/sandbox-macos-permissive-proxied.sb	1.31 kB	0 B
./bundle/sandbox-macos-restrictive-closed.sb	3.29 kB	0 B
./bundle/sandbox-macos-restrictive-open.sb	3.36 kB	0 B
./bundle/sandbox-macos-restrictive-proxied.sb	3.56 kB	0 B

_{compressed-size-action}