Gemini's Grounding Feature

PLUS: Monk Like Discipline: What It Really Takes To Win

Author

Startup Spells 🪄
February 05, 2025

Gemini's Grounding Feature

Gemini has a standout feature called Grounding. It helps improve answers by pulling in real-time information from Google Search. This makes responses more accurate and useful. As a result, Gemini hallucinates less.

Recently, while switching from Windows 11 to my new Mac M4, this feature proved invaluable.

I had a monumental task of transferring 500GB of files over WiFi, setting up SSH keys for GitHub, installing new fonts in VSCode, and other setup tasks.

In the past, Google Search was my go-to tool for finding answers.

But using Gemini's Grounding feature directly in AI Studio made the process smoother and faster.

There are 2 ways to go about AI Models right now:

  1. Make it a conversation. Think of the LLM like your college professor. The professor has enough knowledge to answer your questions but only if you can ask him a specific question. Only then, you get the right answer. This is the basic model that answers without thinking. Gemini, DeepSeek, and GPT-4o are such examples.

  2. Dump all your thoughts in one-go. Think of the LLM like the world's best expert. The expert can answer all your questions but it needs some time to think. This is the model that thinks. Open AI o1 and DeepSeek R1 are examples of such models.

We'll only cover #1 here where we have a conversation. I did not mention models by Anthropic like Claude 3.5 Sonnet since Anthropic's CEO doesn't believe in 2 schools of models so who knows Claude might be a thinking model without being explicit about it & that’s why there are insane limits to it compared to others.

Here are 3 practical examples I used to save myself insane amount of time:

Example #1: Moving Files from Mac to Windows Over WiFi

Moving 500GB of files from my Windows to my Mac was frustrating. I kept hitting permission errors. Fortunately, Gemini came to rescue.

Mac To Windows Transfer Over WiFi

Prompts Used:

  • Prompt #1: "Give me steps to transfer files from Mac to Windows over WiFi with actual examples." Then I misunderstood one step so I asked it.

  • Prompt #2: "How to find this: You may be prompted for a username and password. Use the username and password of the macOS user account you enabled for file sharing." And I couldn't figure out how to open Windows from Mac so I asked it to do the reverse, i.e, open Mac to Windows using a specific example as you can see I used "Mac's Go To Server" below.

  • Prompt #3: "Give me the instructions if I want to connect to Windows from a Mac. The reverse of this using Mac's Go To Server. I want examples too."

  • Prompt #4: "How do I fix 'Your Folder cannot be shared' on Windows?"

  • Prompt #5: "Fix the error 'You've been denied specific permissions to access this folder' globally. I have had this error after trying to share a folder."

  • Prompt #6: "I get 'Failed to enumerate objects in the container. Access is denied.' after trying to replace all child object permission entries with inheritable permission entries from this object." And I got a final answer so I told Gemini and it gave the final prompt.

  • Prompt #7: "This worked using CMD: takeown /f "<FolderPath>" /r /d y."

Example #2: Setting Up Git in an Existing Repo

I copied my entire project to a new machine, and Git acts like it's never seen these files before. Hundreds of 'uncommitted changes' that I definitely committed before. Frustrating, right? Through Gemini, I learned the right sequence of Git commands to sync everything properly. No more missing commit history.

Sync Git

Prompts Used:

  • Prompt #1: "How to add .git folder to existing repo that I've already downloaded but I don't have any commits on it. I just copy-pasted from another machine. Give me steps in a listicle." And it did.

  • Prompt #2: "I got 'Already up to date,' but I have 478 files uncommitted for some reason. All of those were committed on another machine. How do I make sure the commits are synced too?" And I got the final answer but I wanted to format it correctly so I asked the final prompt.

  • Prompt #3: Give me this without comments: 

git branch # Find out your current branch (e.g., main)
git checkout .  # Discard changes to tracked files
git clean -fd   # Remove untracked files and directories
git pull origin main
git status # Should show a clean working directory

The above including the code-block was the full prompt. For context, anything after # is a comment.

Example #3: Installing Monaspace in VSCode

I wanted to use this cool new font called Monaspace by GitHub in VSCode. Instead of downloading files manually like a caveman, Gemini showed me I could just use Homebrew to install it in seconds. Later, I switched to Jetbrains Mono Font as Monaspace wasn't showing ligatures.

Install Jetbrains Mono

Prompts Used:

Example #4:

Setting up SSH keys always felt like navigating a technical maze. This time, I used Gemini to walk me through the process step-by-step.

SSH Key Setup On Mac

Prompts Used:

  • Prompt #1: "Give me steps to use SSH key on Mac in a list format with examples" And it gave me everything I needed. Granted, I know where to find an article specifically for this but with AI, I can just type it (or voice it) in 10 words.

Gemini’s Grounding feature makes troubleshooting and setup tasks much easier. Instead of hunting for answers across multiple search results, it provides clear solutions in one place, saving time and effort.

My favorite question is to ask "Give me steps in listicle." to give me a step-by-step answer like WikiHow without the unnecessary story.

Next time, try Google's AI Studio to access Gemini (its free for now) and make sure to select Grounding to save yourself time. What would have taken me 2-6 hours was done in <30 minutes.

Top Tweets of the day

1/

This Reddit trick is useful if you find a smart growth hacker's username or want to search your old posts.

2/

Knowing how to use a search engine is the #1 way to find alpha.

3/

Smart way to get reviews. You can even use this principle for agency, SaaS, or any other products.

The best time to make a move is when the customer is happy.

Rabbit Holes

What’d ya think of today’s newsletter? Hit ‘reply’ and let me know.

Do me a favor and share it in your company's Slack #marketing channel.

First time? Subscribe.

Follow me on X.

More Startup Spells 🪄

  1. How Noah Kagan’s 3 Videos Outshined 449 Others (LINK)

  2. Monster Hammering Links (LINK)

  3. Hijack Attention (using Pattern Interrupt) (LINK)

  4. Reverse-Engineering Distribution (via Open Analytics) (LINK)

Reply

or to participate.