Developers can effortlessly connect, interact, and generate data insights with BigQuery datasets and data using natural language commands.

Learn more about Gemini CLI Extensions.

• Natural Language to data analytics : Find required BigQuery tables and ask analytical questions in natural language.
• Seamless Workflow: Stay in your CLI. No need to constantly switch contexts to the GCP console for generating analytical insights.
• Run advanced analytics : Generate forecasts, run a contributions analysis using built-in advanced tools.

Before you begin, ensure you have the following:

• Gemini CLI installed with version +v0.6.0.
• Setup Gemini CLI Authentication.
• A Google Cloud project with the BigQuery API enabled.
• Ensure Application Default Credentials are available in your environment.
• IAM Permissions:
  • BigQuery User (roles/bigquery.user)

To install the extension, use the command:

gemini extensions install https://github.com/gemini-cli-extensions/bigquery-data-analytics

Set the following environment variables before starting the Gemini CLI. These variables can be loaded from a .env file.

export BIGQUERY_PROJECT="<your-gcp-project-id>"
export BIGQUERY_LOCATION="<your-dataset-location>"  # Optional
export BIGQUERY_USE_CLIENT_OAUTH="true"  # Optional

Ensure Application Default Credentials are available in your environment.

To start the Gemini CLI, use the following command:

gemini

Interact with BigQuery using natural language right from your IDE:

• Find Data:

  • "Find tables related to PyPi downloads"
  • "Find tables related to Google analytics data in the dataset bigquery-public-data"

• Generate Analytics and insights:

  • "Using bigquery-public-data.pypi.file_downloads show me the top 10 downloaded pypi packages this month."
  • “Using bigquery-public-data.pypi.file_downloads can you forecast downloads for the last four months of 2025 for package urllib3?”

This extension provides a comprehensive set of tools:

• execute_sql: Executes a SQL query.
• forecast: Forecast time series data.
• get_dataset_info: Get dataset metadata.
• get_table_info: Get table metadata.
• list_dataset_ids: Lists dataset ids in the database.
• list_table_ids: Lists table ids in the database.
• analyze_contribution: Perform contribution analysis, also called key driver analysis.
• search_catalog: Search for tables based on the provided query.

Find additional extensions to support your entire software development lifecycle at github.com/gemini-cli-extensions, including:

• BigQuery Conversational Analytics
• and more!

Use gemini --debug to enable debugging.

Common issues:

• "failed to find default credentials: google: could not find default credentials.": Ensure Application Default Credentials are available in your environment. See Set up Application Default Credentials for more information.
• "✖ Error during discovery for server: MCP error -32000: Connection closed": The database connection has not been established. Ensure your configuration is set via environment variables.
• "✖ MCP ERROR: Error: spawn /Users/USER/.gemini/extensions/bigquery-data-analytics/toolbox ENOENT": The Toolbox binary did not download correctly. Ensure you are using Gemini CLI v0.6.0+.
• "cannot execute binary file": The Toolbox binary did not download correctly. Ensure the correct binary for your OS/Architecture has been downloaded. See Installing the server for more information.