Antigravity Review: The New AI Development Platform

Last Thursday, David opened VS Code to build a feature, spent ninety minutes wrestling with imports and environment setup, and muttered something about "gravity pulling developers into the weeds." Twenty-four hours later, he installed Google Antigravity, gave it the same task, and watched three autonomous agents handle the entire implementation—including terminal commands and browser testing—while he sipped coffee.

Welcome to the agent-first era.

What is Google Antigravity?

Google Antigravity is Google's answer to a problem that's been nagging developers since AI coding assistants appeared: tools like GitHub Copilot are brilliant at finishing your sentences, but you're still the one typing every line, fixing every import, and running every test.

Antigravity takes a radically different approach. Instead of being a faster way to write code, it's a platform where AI agents become the primary workers. You stop being the typist and start being the architect.

Announced on November 18, 2025, alongside the launch of Gemini 3, Antigravity marks Google's return to its engineering roots. Co-founder Sergey Brin reportedly went into "Founder Mode," working late nights to refine the platform's agentic capabilities. The goal? Move Google from "Search" to "Action."

Much of Antigravity's DNA comes from Windsurf, an AI-first IDE that Google acquired for $2.4 billion specifically to accelerate this vision.

The Core Innovation: Agent-First Architecture

Traditional IDEs assume humans are the primary actors. Antigravity flips that assumption entirely. The platform introduces two distinct interaction modes:

1. Editor View (When You're Hands-On)

A familiar, AI-powered IDE with tab completions and inline commands. This is for synchronous work—when you want direct control.

2. Manager Surface (Mission Control)

This is where the paradigm shift happens. A dedicated interface where you spawn, orchestrate, and observe multiple agents working asynchronously across different workspaces.

You don't write code in Manager Surface. You delegate entire tasks. The agents plan, execute, and verify—autonomously navigating your editor, terminal, and an integrated browser.

Key Features That Actually Matter

Autonomous Terminal & Browser Access

Agents don't just suggest code. They can:

• Launch local servers via terminal
• Run npm install or pip install automatically
• Open a browser to test UI components
• Debug errors and retry failed operations

This is what separates Antigravity from tools that only live in your editor.

Trust-Building Artifacts

Delegating work to an AI requires trust, but scrolling through raw logs is tedious. Antigravity solves this elegantly:

Instead of showing tool calls, agents generate Artifacts—tangible deliverables like:

• Task implementation plans
• To-do lists with completion status
• Screenshots of the running application
• Browser recordings showing UI tests

You can review these Artifacts at a glance and leave feedback directly—like commenting on a Google Doc. The agent incorporates your input without restarting.

Model Optionality

While optimized for Gemini 3 Pro, Antigravity supports:

• Anthropic's Claude Sonnet 4.5 (for reasoning-heavy tasks)
• OpenAI GPT-OSS (specialized open-source variants)

Generous rate limits on Gemini 3 Pro during public preview mean you won't hit API caps for typical projects.

Self-Improving Knowledge Base

Antigravity treats learning as a core primitive. Agents can:

• Save useful context and code snippets to a shared knowledge base
• Retrieve patterns from previous tasks
• Improve performance over time without manual intervention

Plan Mode vs. Fast Mode

Two execution strategies for different needs:

• Plan Mode: For complex tasks. The agent generates a detailed implementation plan for your review before coding begins.
• Fast Mode: For quick edits like "center this div" or "add error handling." No review step—just immediate execution.

Real-World Test: Building an Endless Runner Game

To test Antigravity's capabilities, I gave it a single prompt:

"Build an endless runner game where a car travels upward, avoiding oncoming traffic. Include difficulty levels (Easy, Medium, Hard) and increasing speed as the player progresses."

What happened next:

1. Analysis Phase (30 seconds): Agent generated a detailed implementation plan covering HTML structure, CSS styling, JavaScript game logic, collision detection, and difficulty scaling.
2. Coding Phase (2 minutes): Three files created—index.html, styles.css, game.js—with clean, commented code.
3. Verification Phase (1 minute): Agent launched a local server, opened the game in the integrated browser, and provided a walkthrough document with screenshots.

Total time: Under 4 minutes from prompt to playable game.

When I tested manually, the collision detection was slightly off. I left a comment on the Artifact: "Collision box feels too strict." The agent adjusted the hitbox logic and re-tested—no full restart required.

Pricing: Free During Public Preview (2026)

As of February 2026, Antigravity is completely free for individual developers:

• ✅ No credit card required
• ✅ Generous rate limits on Gemini 3 Pro
• ✅ Full support for Claude Sonnet 4.5 and GPT-OSS
• ✅ Cross-platform (macOS, Windows, Linux)

Enterprise Tier (coming soon) will include:

• Advanced team collaboration features
• Higher security guardrails
• Unlimited model usage
• Priority support

For solopreneurs and small teams, the free tier is more than sufficient for serious development work.

Google Antigravity vs. Cursor vs. Windsurf

The verdict: If you're building features that require coordination across tools—like setting up a database, writing API endpoints, and testing in a browser—Antigravity excels. If you want a faster autocomplete with chat, Cursor remains excellent for synchronous work.

What I Actually Like

Background task delegation: You can dispatch an agent to fix a bug or reproduce an issue while you work on something else. The Manager Surface shows progress asynchronously—no context switching required.

Artifact-based trust: Reviewing a task plan or screenshot is infinitely faster than parsing logs. This single feature makes agent-driven development practical.

Terminal + browser autonomy: The ability for agents to run commands and test UI independently eliminates 80% of the tedious "glue work" between tools.

Model flexibility: Not being locked into a single AI model means you can optimize for speed (Gemini 3 Flash) or reasoning depth (Claude Sonnet 4.5) depending on the task.

What Needs Work

Permission management: Agents may attempt to run chmod or sudo to solve permission issues. During public preview, it's highly recommended to use Antigravity in a sandboxed environment or dedicated development machine—not your production workspace.

Resource intensity: This isn't a lightweight text editor. Running multiple agents with browser instances requires at least 16GB RAM. Apple Silicon Macs (M1/M2/M3/M4) perform best due to unified memory architecture.

Learning curve: The "architect mindset" takes adjustment. You need to think in terms of outcomes, not implementation steps. If you're used to controlling every line of code, the shift feels uncomfortable at first.

Error recovery: When an agent gets stuck, the feedback loop isn't always clear. Sometimes it retries endlessly without escalating to you for input.

Who Should Use Antigravity?

Perfect for:

• Vibe coders who think in outcomes, not syntax
• Developers building MVPs or prototypes quickly
• Teams experimenting with AI agent workflows
• Anyone tired of context-switching between editor, terminal, and browser

Not ideal for:

• Developers who need absolute control over every line
• Production-critical codebases (during public preview)
• Resource-constrained machines (8GB RAM or less)
• Teams requiring enterprise security guardrails (wait for Enterprise Tier)

Practical Tips from Two Weeks of Use

1. Be specific but goal-oriented: Don't tell the agent how to write the loop; tell it what the result should accomplish.

2. Always review the Plan: In Plan Mode, read the implementation plan before clicking "Approve." It saves debugging time later.

3. Isolate tasks: Give the agent one clear mission at a time. If you want to create a login page and migrate a database, run these as two separate tasks in the Manager Surface.

4. Use Fast Mode liberally: For small edits or styling tweaks, Fast Mode eliminates unnecessary planning overhead.

5. Sandbox your environment: During public preview, don't run Antigravity on your primary production machine. Use a VM, Docker container, or dedicated development box.

The Bottom Line

Google Antigravity isn't just another AI coding assistant—it's a bet on a fundamentally different way of building software. Instead of making you a faster typist, it makes you a better architect.

The agent-first paradigm works brilliantly for tasks that span multiple tools: building features, debugging across the stack, and testing UI behavior. The Artifact-based review system solves the trust problem that plagued earlier autonomous coding tools.

But it's not for everyone. If you derive satisfaction from writing every line yourself, or if you're working on mission-critical production code, stick with Cursor or traditional IDEs for now.

For the rest of us—especially those building AI agents, automating workflows with n8n, or experimenting with AI-assisted development—Antigravity is a glimpse into the near future.

And right now, that future is free.

Download Antigravity: antigravity.google/download

My rating: 4.2/5

✅ Excellent for: Multi-step feature development, background task delegation, rapid prototyping

⚠️ Limitations: Resource-intensive, permission management during preview, learning curve

💰 Price: Free (public preview, as of Feb 2026)

Want to go deeper into AI-powered development? Check out our guides on vibe coding, building AI agents with n8n, and AI automation workflows.