Wednesday roundup: 28 Oct 2026

gemini-api, previously an experimental preview, has moved to beta. It's an open-source, zero-dependency command-line client built for coding agents, scripts and CI rather than for people typing at it.

It runs on the Interactions API and covers text, images, speech, music and video generation, file analysis and transcription, and launching managed agents such as Deep Research in the background. Media is written to disk with only the path printed, commands never prompt unless you ask, --dry-run previews a request offline, and exit codes are typed (2 for bad usage, 3 for auth).

Google warns that breaking changes can land between minor versions. Separately, A2UI (Google's generative UI format) gets A2UI Express, a compact syntax Google says uses up to 3x fewer tokens.

Codex CLI now has a built-in Google Cloud Vertex AI provider (model_provider = "gcp"), GPT-6.1 Terra in its model catalogue, and mid-conversation reasoning effort changes switched on by default.

Memory v2 is on by default for fresh profiles and can import memories from other agents, and the session picker gets a repository filter for working across linked worktrees.

Fixes include not retrying when a provider says a model doesn't exist, and queued messages no longer restarting work after an interrupt.

The Claude apps gateway gets oidc.user_id_claim, so you can identify people by a claim other than sub, such as Entra ID's oid. Claude Code will no longer overwrite a very large CLAUDE.md or rules file after only reading its start.

On Bedrock, Vertex, Foundry and Mantle, custom deployment names and inference profile ARNs now get the shorter system prompt (CLAUDE_CODE_SIMPLE_SYSTEM_PROMPT=0 keeps the full one).

Hooks now run at most 24 at a time per session, the claude_code.safety_event OpenTelemetry event added last week has been dropped, and Code Review now reviews the PR's current commit when GitHub delivers a push event late.

1Password now connects without a shared vault: you approve each login in 1Password and it fills the Bot's browser without the Bot seeing the password.

Settings gets a Permissions section listing Auto-review rules, approval cards stay open for 30 minutes instead of 10, and the Vault has a Payments tab for picking which payment method Bots use first.

Bots can also ask several questions on one card, and custom MCP servers behind a private certificate authority work once you approve that authority.