Conductor: Introducing context-driven development for Gemini CLI
Source: Google Developers Blog
Dec 17, 2025
- Jay Kornder – Senior Product Manager – Developer & Experiences
- Sherzat Aitbayev – Senior Software Engineer – Developer & Experiences
Measure twice, code once
Benjamin Franklin said: “Failing to plan is planning to fail.” Yet, in the age of AI we often dive straight into implementation without first establishing a clear understanding of what we’re building. Conductor (a new extension, now available in preview for Gemini CLI) changes this workflow by using context‑driven development.
Instead of relying on impermanent chat logs, Conductor helps you create formal specs and plans that live alongside your code in persistent Markdown files. This lets you:
- Plan before you build – create specs and plans that guide the agent for new and existing codebases.
- Maintain context – ensure the AI follows style guides, tech‑stack choices, and product goals.
- Iterate safely – review plans before any code is written, keeping you firmly in the loop.
- Work as a team – give your AI agents the same project‑wide best‑practice context.
- Build on existing projects – leverage your current code to inform design decisions.
The philosophy behind Conductor is simple: control your code. By treating context as a managed artifact alongside your code, you turn your repository into a single source of truth that drives every agent interaction with deep, persistent project awareness.
Screenshot
Support for “Brownfield” Projects
Most of our work involves established codebases (a.k.a. brownfield projects). These are precisely the environments where AI tools often fall short, lacking the nuanced understanding of a project’s history, architecture, and conventions.
How Conductor Helps
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Context‑driven onboarding – When you point Conductor at an existing repository, it starts an interactive session that guides you in creating a core set of documents:
- Architecture overview
- Coding guidelines
- Project goals
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Continuous knowledge growth – As you add features or tackle new tasks, Conductor automatically updates the shared context, keeping its understanding in sync with the evolving codebase.
What’s Next
This is just the first step. Over the coming months we’ll roll out enhancements that make Conductor an even more indispensable partner for your existing projects. Stay tuned!
Conductor for Teams
Conductor lets you define project‑level context for your product, tech stack, and workflow preferences. Set these preferences once, and they become the shared foundation for every feature your team builds.
- Unified testing strategy – define a testing approach that Gemini automatically applies.
- Centralized constraints & standards – all AI‑generated contributions follow your guidelines, no matter who runs the command.
- Faster onboarding – new members inherit the same configuration, so features feel like they were written by a single, cohesive engineering team.
By consolidating technical constraints and coding standards, Conductor ensures consistency, accelerates development, and maintains a unified engineering voice across the entire team.
How Conductor Works
Conductor is a structured workflow for agentic development, ideal for tasks that are more complex than simple code edits. Unlike a standard chat session that is confined to a single interaction, Conductor uses a set of Markdown files to plan and track progress over time. These files persist in your repository, letting you pause, resume, and switch machines without losing context.
1. Establish Context
Run /conductor:setup to define the core components of your project. The captured context can then be reused when building new components or features.
- Product – Define your users, product goals, and high‑level features.
- Tech stack – Choose your preferred language, database, and frameworks.
- Workflow – Set team preferences (e.g., test‑driven development).
2. Specify and Plan
When you’re ready for a new feature or bug fix, run /conductor:newTrack. This creates a track—Conductor’s term for a high‑level unit of work. Instead of jumping straight into code, Conductor helps you generate two critical artifacts:
| Artifact | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Specs | Detailed requirements: what we’re building and why. |
| Plan | Actionable to‑do list organized into Phases → Tasks → Sub‑tasks. |
Conductor walks you through each artifact, suggesting answers based on the previously captured context to help you quickly produce high‑quality specs and plans.
3. Implement
After approving the plan, run /conductor:implement. Your coding agent works through the plan.md file, checking off tasks as they are completed. Because the state is saved in a file, you can:
- Stop, grab coffee, and resume later without losing your place.
- Revert to a previous version via built‑in checkpoints.
- Edit the plan mid‑flight if priorities change.
With Conductor, your workflow becomes a persistent, collaborative, and reproducible series of Markdown‑driven steps, making complex development tasks manageable across time and machines.
Get started
We believe that context‑driven development leads to higher‑quality outcomes for complex projects. By treating your documentation as the source of truth, you empower Gemini to act as a true extension of your engineering team.
- Via the repository: github.com/gemini-cli-extensions/conductor
- Or with the command line:
gemini extensions install https://github.com/gemini-cli-extensions/conductor