By skyforbes I've been running into this issue when working with Gemini 2.5 and 3.0 in AI Studio where I will make suggested changes within the chat interface and G will return a code block in the chat interface (via code blocks) with it's suggested improvements to all requisite files instead of actually making the changes to the project directory code itself.
- Troubleshooting done:
- I will have to explicitly state that I want it to make the changes to the directory code, sometimes multiple times, before the files will appear updated. This is EXTREMELY annoying. Even if I append my initial input with a line saying to make changes directly to the codebase, it will still require 2-3 additional requests from me to make the changes.
- I've also tried editing the system prompts to include statements about this with no luck either. It feels completely arbitrary when this behavior will occur and for how long.
- Present for several months with the Gemini 2.5 Pro Model and still experiencing this with the new Gemini 3 model.
- Once, in frustration, I even asked G to predict what I was frustrated with after this behavior happened one too many times. G responded that I was mad it wasn't making the edits to the codebase directly and proceeded to then edit the codebase…. Good, even humorous outcome, but if it clearly understands my request and I'm being clear in my inputs on multiple fronts, why does continue to happen?
Anybody else experiencing this?
Note: I have a lingering suspicion that this is behavior coded into the model to save google on compute costs related to making changes directly to the directory rather than just outputting the supposed changes, since the latter is less computationally expensive.