Swapping a Preview TTS Model for 3.8 Flash-Lite TTS, Then Re-choosing a Voice From 150+ Candidates
On September 22, gemini-3.8-flash-lite-tts went GA as the replacement for the 3.1 Flash TTS preview. Here is what I did over one week: replacing the preview model name behind my healing app's guidance audio and re-choosing a voice from the new /v1beta/voices endpoint.
When BLOCK_NONE Changes Nothing: Telling Adjustable Gemini Blocks from the Ones You Can't Move
Some safety blocks go away when you loosen a threshold. Others never will. Here is how to read the response and decide which kind you are looking at before you touch a single setting.
Taking stock of Gemini standard API keys before September, across CI, servers, and my own machine
Standard API keys, including restricted ones, stop being accepted during September. Because this changes where keys come from rather than what they say, here is the three-layer inventory I ran across code, deploy settings, and my local machine, plus a dual-path client to switch behind.
When a New Gemini Feature Hasn't Reached Your Workspace, Here's How to Tell Waiting From Broken
A step-by-step way to decide whether a missing Gemini feature in Google Workspace is still rolling out or actually misconfigured, using release tracks and rollout pace, plus a small Apps Script ledger that does the counting for you.
Your New Gemini API Key Never Took Effect, and Load Order Wasn't the Reason
When several sources supply the same environment variable, swapping your key can leave the old value in place. Here is what four load orders actually produced, and a ledger that records which source won.
A twice-daily batch that only ran once — reconstructing run counts from artifacts
One half of a scheduled job silently never fired, and throughput sat at half of plan for over a week without a single error in the logs. Here is how I reconstructed actual run counts from artifacts and backlog, with working code.
Turning Logging Off in AI Studio Also Turns Off Interactions API Conversation History
When no Gemini API logs show up in AI Studio, the usual culprit is the store default, which is inverted between the two APIs. Here is the side effect that quietly stops conversation history, and how to set store per request so it never surprises you.
The Assistant Switch Is One-Way, So the Baseline Has to Be Captured Now
From September 4, Google Assistant is replaced by Gemini, and a device that has switched cannot go back. Here is how I started recording voice-originated launches inside my own apps, and the assumption about splitting before and after by date that turned out to be wrong.
Your Shipped App Still Remembers the Retired Model
Finishing the server-side migration is only half of a model retirement. The older builds of your app still hold the old model name, and once the cutoff passes, rolling back stops being a recovery option. Here is how I moved model resolution onto the server.
The Day the Knowledge Cutoff Moved Forward, the Stale Part Was My System Instruction
When a model's knowledge cutoff advances, the thing that goes stale is not the model — it is the dated assertions in your system instruction. Here is why only the lines written between the two cutoffs flip from helpful to contradictory, plus a working audit script and its measured results.
After the Vertex AI Rename, I Measured My Search Stack. Ranking Held. Aggregation Did Not.
When Vertex AI became Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, I benchmarked my own docs search. Ranking barely moved. The exact-match layer quietly lost most of its results without raising a single error.
A 17% Drop in Output Tokens Sounded Big. Then I Decomposed the Bill
Output pricing fell 16.67% and output tokens fell about 17%. Adding those numbers does not give you the savings. Here is an exact price/volume/cross-term decomposition, plus a loop measurement where the savings rate went down instead of up.