Seed an interactive session with a first prompt
headless & scripting
// what it does
-i (or --prompt-interactive) runs the given prompt as the opening turn and then drops you into the interactive TUI to keep going, instead of exiting like -p. Use it to prime a session with context — "explain this project" — before you start asking follow-ups. Because it keeps the session open, use -p, not -i, in a non-interactive pipeline where it would otherwise hang waiting for input.
// shell
$ gemini -i "explain the architecture of this repo"