This is a submission for the Google I/O Writing Challenge

Last week, I got the little green banner. Pull request merged. A small contribution to Gemini CLI — a fix I'd been meaning to submit for months — finally made it in. I closed my laptop feeling quietly satisfied.

Twenty-four hours later, Google announced Gemini CLI is being sunsetted.

I'm not going to pretend my PR was significant. It wasn't. But the timing felt like a metaphor so on-the-nose that I almost laughed. And the more I sat with it, the less funny it became.

What Actually Happened at I/O 2026