gemini-cli - 💡(How to fix) Fix Explicit Model Selection Ignored After Flash Quota Exhaustion

What happened?

The Gemini CLI (version 0.41.2) fails to respect explicit model selection (e.g., gemini-3.1-pro-preview) once the quota for gemini-3-flash-preview (or the default Flash model) is exhausted. Despite having Pro model quota available and explicitly configuring the CLI to use it, all subsequent requests are blocked by attempts to call the exhausted Flash model.

This behavior suggests a flaw in the ModelAvailabilityService or the model routing logic, where a "silent fallback" or a hardcoded preference for Flash persists even when the user has overridden the model selection.

The CLI attempts to request gemini-3-flash-preview. Since the Flash quota is exhausted, the request fails with a quota error, rendering the CLI unusable for any task requiring the model, even though the Pro model is available and requested.

What did you expect to happen?

The CLI should honor the explicit model selection (gemini-3.1-pro-preview) and successfully execute the request using the Pro model's quota.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Exhaust the quota for gemini-3-flash-preview (the default/Flash category model).
2. Explicitly set the CLI model to gemini-3.1-pro-preview.
3. Execute any command that requires an LLM call (e.g., a simple prompt or a research task).

Client information

• CLI Version: 0.41.2
• Git Commit: b0c7a1722
• Operating System: darwin v25
• Sandbox Environment: no sandbox
• Model Version: auto-gemini-3
• Auth Type: oauth-personal

Login information

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Anything else we need to know?

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