bug: tm parse-prd hangs with Gemini model

[ez-office-eden]

Description

When running tm parse-prd, the PRD file is detected correctly, but no tokens are consumed and task generation hangs. It stays at Tasks 0/10 indefinitely with Tokens (I/O): 0/0.

Steps to Reproduce

1. tm init
2. main model, research model, fallback model : gemini-cli / gemini-2.5-pro
3. add GOOGLE_API_KEY to the .env file
4. write sample prd file
5. tm parse-prd

Screenshots or Logs

`

---

|_ | _ | | __ | / | __ _ | | ___ _ __
| |/ / __| |/ / | |\/| |/ _ / __| / _ \ '|
| | (| _ \ < | | | | (| _ \ || __/ |
||_,|/|_\ || ||_,|/___|_|

by https://x.com/eyaltoledano
╭───────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ │
│ Version: 0.25.0 Project: Taskmaster │
│ │
╰───────────────────────────────────────────╯

🏷️ tag: master
Parsing PRD file: /home/eden_lee/trade/v4/.taskmaster/docs/prd.md
Generating 10 tasks...
[INFO] Tag 'master' is empty or doesn't exist. Creating/updating tag with new tasks.
╭────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╮
│ │
│ 🤖 Parsing PRD and Generating Tasks │
│ Model: gemini-2.5-pro | Temperature: 0.2 │
│ │
│ Input: /home/eden_lee/trade/v4/.taskmaster/docs/prd.md │
│ Output: /home/eden_lee/trade/v4/.taskmaster/tasks/tasks.json │
│ Tasks to Generate: 10 │
│ │
╰────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────╯
⏱️ 20m 56s | ⋮ 0 : 0 . 0 | Tokens (I/O): 0/0 | Est: ~calculating...
Tasks 0/10 |░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░░| 0%`

Environment

• Task Master version : 0.25.0
• Node.js version : v22.18.0
• Operating system : wsl ubuntu 22.04.5 lts
• IDE (if applicable) : cursor

[bigwolfeman]

I had the same issue when I added perplexity to my api keys. I had remove it. Eventually I added it back and re setup the models and it worked.

[tanzir1123]

Facing the EXACT same issue apparently.

[lakimijon]

Gemini Model making me think it only needs anthropic key. True?

[ben-vargas]

This is definitely a defect, likely introduced by a recent release... I haven't really kept on top of the changes in the last two releases but I know the claude-code from terminal performs horribly (it appears frozen/failing, but then finishes) with the new status progression indicator, there seems to be regression bugs there (or never worked correctly/tested).

But the gemini-cli provider is even worse, it hangs and never returns at all... I let a simple tetris prd-parse run last night on 0.25.0 for over an hour and it never returned. It's safe to say its broken in latest release (though I did validate Gemini/Google team didn't make a major breaking change, the actual ai-sdk-provider-gemini-cli dependency task master uses runs all the examples interacting with gemini cli okay it seems).

This will have to be looked into, for now you'll have to downgrade or use another provider.

[ben-vargas]

Interestingly when I tried testing tonight, I did get a completion. But in short this is what research shows, and why/how the recent related changes to parse-prd broke the gemini-cli provider.

Simplified root cause...

What Changed: parse-prd now streams tasks.
What Went Wrong: Instructions were placed incorrectly, and we didn't switch on JSON mode; Gemini was silent.
Symptom: The timer moved, but tokens remained at 0/0.

What parse-prd was doing: It asked Gemini to send the task list “live” in little pieces (streaming), so the CLI can show progress as tasks appear.

Why that causes a hang: Gemini never starts sending usable task pieces. The CLI timer keeps ticking, but nothing arrives (tokens stay 0/0), so it looks stuck.

Why this popped up now: Task Master devs recently switched parse-prd to use streaming for progress. Our non-streaming path already handled Gemini quirks, but the new streaming path didn’t — that’s the regression.

More technical root cause...

• Provider mismatch: parse-prd uses streamObject now, rather than generateObject, but the Gemini CLI provider did not override streamObject. It fell back to BaseAIProvider.streamObject

• Gemini CLI specifics: The ai-sdk-provider-gemini-cli expects a real system prompt (system: ...) and behaves much better for structured output when using mode: 'json'. Without those, the
  model often doesn’t produce JSON, so partialObjectStream never emits or finishes — the CLI timer advances forever with 0/0 tokens.

• This regression cropped up after recent changes:

  • parse-prd switched to streaming objects for progress tracking (feat: CLI & MCP progress tracking for parse-prd command #1048 in CHANGELOG).

The gap was that streamObject handling never received the Gemini-specific treatment that generateObject/streamText got.

And, this gets to ai-sdk-provider-gemini-cli ... it is quite difficult to coerce gemini cli into sending pure JSON, let alone streaming it... it wants to be an agentic tool and talk (probably in Google's system prompt), interjecting extra conversational info in its responses - it isn't an API endpoint in the traditional sense where you have a pure json interface for integrated systems. Getting JSON reliably is frustrating enough, trying to STREAM it is another step up from that.

For now, ai-sdk-provider-gemini-cli doesn't support streaming json, nor does the implementation for claude-code for similar reasons. The dev team will have to re-think the blanket approach of visualizing progress/status via streamObject() across all providers without regard to limitations of the CLIs.

The reality is that the Task Master team moves fast and ships fast to deliver new innovations to users, and unfortunately not all edge cases are foreseen or thoroughly regression tested across all of the providers - us contributors are unpaid volunteers, so we're not all in the loop on what is changing to call out possible issues.

Rolling back to before #1048 should return usability for gemini-cli users until this is refactored for the CLI limitations.

[shawnesquivel]

facing this issue as well. any reocmmendations?

[ben-vargas]

@shawnesquivel - Are you running Task Master 0.25.1?

Ralph has disabled that streamObject code flow, so I would think this shouldn't be hanging for you if you're on that version? You shouldn't be seeing the new status progression visualization at all.

Also double check your version of ai-sdk-provider-gemini-cli using npm ls -g ai-sdk-provider-gemini-cli after you run the npm install -g task-master-ai to upgrade, just to confirm its on 0.1.3 which fixed a separate breaking change Google made to @google/gemini-cli-core

[tanzir1123]

@ben-vargas Thanks so much for such detailed explanation. Yeah, it's resolved now, with latest version 0.25.1.

if anyone's still facing it, update tm with npm update -g task-master-ai

thanks @ez-office-eden for bringing it up, btw.

[github-actions]

Found 2 possible duplicate issues:

1. bug: #1150
2. bug: #1149

This issue will be automatically closed as a duplicate in 3 days.

• If your issue is a duplicate, please close it and 👍 the existing issue instead
• To prevent auto-closure, add a comment or 👎 this comment

🤖 Generated with [Task Master Bot]