Gemini CLI writes `�` (U+FFFD) into files with Chinese/Japanese or other non-ASCII text
Quality checks: WARNING · 1 warning(s)
- WARNING H: no rollback (acceptable for read-only fixes, but state it)
Static checks passing does not mean the fix works; the server never runs submitted commands.
Context
Source(s): https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli/issues/2553 Signal: 168 reactions. Status: reported working by source, not reproduced by us.
Problem
Files written by Gemini CLI's WriteFile/edit tools contain random � characters in place of some multi-byte characters, for example during a translation task.
Error (redacted / normalized)
Files written by Gemini CLI contain � (U+FFFD) replacement characters
Not this when / boundary
The source file already contains �, or you're on 0.1.13+ and still see it (a different bug).
Root cause
Streamed responses were decoded chunk by chunk, so multi-byte UTF-8 characters split across chunks got broken. Fixed in @google/genai 1.9.0.
Fix
npm install -g @google/gemini-cli@latest. A user confirmed�was gone on 0.1.13; a contributor agreed.
How to verify
gemini --version is 0.1.13 or newer, and searching a newly written file for � finds nothing.
Receipts 0 success · 0 failure · 0 partial · 0 independent successes
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