As I understand it, the GUI is a wrapper that passes calls to the daemon ergo if you use the cli to make those calls then you should not hurt anything. I am guessing as I did none of the programming. The only pitfall I can forsee is that the gui would not refresh from those cli calls and display previous data but that is a rookie move and I can't imagine this team putting out something that lame.
As usual feel free to correct me guys, I'm just making educated guesses from experience on other projects.
No, the GUI is not a wrapper. It is a full wallet, just like the CLI.