google-gemini / google-gemini/gemini-cli

Agent repeatedly runs broad searches causing massive context overflow

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#17,448 11 comments 0 reactions 1 assignee Claimed by @Atharva-Kanherkar View on GitHub
area/agent help wanted kind/bug priority/p2 status/bot-triaged
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TypeScript
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Description

### What happened?

This happens fairly often. I will ask the agent to review a repo or find code, and it executes an overly broad SearchText command (e.g., searching 'Gmail' in ./ as shown in the screenshot). This picks up thousands of matches, often including huge debug logs or build artifacts.

Instead of refining the search, the agent attempts to ingest all 5,000+ matches immediately. In the attached example, it tried to send a payload of 41 million tokens against a ~900k limit.

Additionally, the UI becomes very confusing here. It displays a yellow "Sending this message..." warning, but it's unclear if the message has actually been sent, if the CLI is hanging, or how to cancel the operation without killing the terminal.

### What did you expect to happen?

Smarter Agent: When a search returns thousands of results, the agent should recognize this is too much and refine its search query—not try to read them all.

Hard Block: The CLI should prevent the agent from attempting to send a request that is 40x over the context limit.

Clearer UI: When a limit is hit, the UI should offer a clear "Cancel" or "Abort" option rather than just saying "Sending...".

### Client information

I terminated the session, so I can't run /about.

Version: 0.24.0-preview
OS: macOS

#######

Screenshot: https://screenshot.googleplex.com/5HatNtr4PQSP7Em

#######

✓ SearchText 'Gmail' within ./

Found 5006 matches

✓ ReadFile scripts/smart_ingest.py

i Sending this message (41740251 tokens) might exceed the remaining context window limit (904878 tokens).

### Login information

API key

### Anything else we need to know?

_No response_

Contributor guide

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