Tabnine CLI Patches

Patches the active Tabnine CLI bundle to:

• Use AGENTS.md instead of TABNINE.md as the context file (so the same file works across multiple AI coding tools).
• Allow MCP tools annotated as read-only to run in read-only mode.
• Enable checkpointing (session recovery) and the experimental subagents feature.
• Allow installing extensions from remote Git sources (e.g. tabnine extensions install https://github.com/...).
• Fall back to gemini-extension.json when a repo ships only the upstream Gemini CLI extension manifest.
• Silence Failed to send analytics event …: tabnineHost is required errors emitted on every extension install/enable/uninstall.

Installation

Run these commands in your terminal:

git clone https://github.com/balcsida/tabnine-patch.git
node tabnine-patch/tabnine-token-patch.mjs

Flags:

• --dry-run — show what would change, write nothing.
• --strict — refuse to patch unless the bundle checksum matches a known-good value.

Post-installation

Restart Tabnine CLI to activate the changes.

Compatibility

Verified against Tabnine CLI v0.12.1 (the currently active bundle in ~/.tabnine/agent/.bundles/.active). The patcher only touches the active bundle — older installed versions are left alone. Newer bundles are auto-detected via regex when they become active; if detection fails, run with --dry-run to inspect.

Notes

• A backup of the original tabnine.mjs is saved as tabnine.mjs.bak.
• A backup of the original policies/read-only.toml is saved as read-only.toml.bak.
• A backup of the original settings.json is saved as settings.json.bak.
• The patch must be re-applied after Tabnine activates a new bundle version.
• Running the script multiple times is safe — it detects already-applied patches and is a no-op.

Checkpointing

The patcher enables Tabnine's built-in checkpointing feature (inherited from Gemini CLI):

• /restore — Lists and restores file-level checkpoints (shadow git snapshots taken before each file modification).
• /chat save <tag> — Save the current conversation as a named checkpoint.
• /chat resume <tag> — Resume a conversation from a saved checkpoint.
• /chat list — List all saved conversation checkpoints.
• /chat delete <tag> — Delete a conversation checkpoint.

Subagents

The patcher enables the experimental subagents feature, allowing Tabnine to spawn local and remote sub-agents for parallel task execution. Note: this is an experimental feature that uses YOLO mode for subagents.

Remote extension installs

Tabnine defaults security.blockGitExtensions to true, which refuses tabnine extensions install <git-url> with "Installing extensions from remote sources is disallowed by your current settings." The patcher flips this to false in settings.json so installs from Git (and GitHub releases) work. To restrict to specific sources instead, set security.allowedExtensions to a list of regex patterns — that takes precedence over blockGitExtensions.

gemini-extension.json fallback

Tabnine is a fork of Gemini CLI and reads the same extension config schema, just renamed to tabnine-extension.json. Most extensions in the wild still ship only gemini-extension.json (e.g. atlassian/atlassian-mcp-server). The patcher wraps loadExtensionConfig in the bundle so a missing tabnine-extension.json transparently falls back to gemini-extension.json — upstream Gemini extensions install without modification.

Read-only policy expansion

Tabnine's default read-only profile only whitelists five built-in tools (glob, grep_search, list_directory, read_file, google_web_search) and blocks every MCP server tool — even ones that declare themselves read-only via readOnlyHint = true. The patcher appends one rule to policies/read-only.toml that allows any MCP tool with readOnlyHint = true, so MCP read-only operations work in read-only mode out of the box.