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Google Antigravity Review: The AI IDE That Actually Lets You Ship Code While You Sleep

I spent three weeks letting an AI agent loose on my codebase at 2 AM. Here's what happened when I switched from Copilot to Google's new Antigravity IDE.

Look, I'll be honest with you. When Google announced Antigravity, I rolled my eyes. Another AI coding tool? We've got Copilot, Cursor, and a dozen others already fighting for space in our workflow. But after hearing about developers literally running autonomous agents overnight and waking up to completed features, I had to try it.

Spoiler: I moved from Copilot + VS Code to Antigravity two weeks ago, and I'm not going back. Let me tell you why—and more importantly, where it still falls short.

Welcome to the Agentic Era (And Why It Actually Matters This Time)

We're not talking about autocomplete on steroids anymore. The Agentic Era means your AI doesn't just suggest the next line it plans, executes, tests, and iterates on entire features while you're doing literally anything else.

Antigravity is Google's bet on this future, and it's powered by Gemini 3 Pro and Flash models. But here's what makes it different: it's not trying to be your coding buddy. It's trying to be your junior developer.


What Makes Antigravity Different From Other AI IDEs

Speed That Actually Matters

I moved from Copilot because Antigravity is noticeably faster on heavy tasks. When you're refactoring a complex module or setting up API integrations, that speed difference compounds. What took Copilot 3-4 minutes of back and forth, Antigravity handles in under 60 seconds.

But speed isn't everything. Here's where Antigravity gets interesting.

The Agentic Browser: Your Secret Weapon

This is the feature that sealed the deal for me. Antigravity includes an Agentic Browser basically, a headless browser your AI agent controls to test your web apps in real time.

You tell it: Build a login form and test it with valid and invalid credentials. It writes the code, spins up the browser, runs the tests, sees the failures, fixes them, and tries again. All automatically.

I've used this for everything from responsive design checks to form validation flows. It's not perfect (more on that later), but it's shockingly effective for catching obvious bugs before you even open a browser yourself.


The Manager View: Running Multiple Agents in Parallel

Here's where things get wild. Antigravity lets you run multiple AI agents in parallel, each working on different tasks.

Imagine this workflow:

  • Agent 1: Refactor the authentication module
  • Agent 2: Write unit tests for the payment service
  • Agent 3: Update API documentation

You set them loose, go grab coffee (or sleep), and come back to three completed pull requests.

Does it work? Surprisingly, yes about 70% of the time. The other 30%, you're debugging conflicts or fixing over agents that decided to optimize something that didn't need optimizing.



The Artifact System: Trust, But Verify

This is smart. Every time an agent makes significant changes, Antigravity creates an Artifact essentially a snapshot showing:

  • What the agent plans to do
  • Screenshots of the current state
  • Diffs of proposed changes

It's like code review, but for AI decisions.

My take: The artifacts are helpful, but I still prefer keeping specification, architecture, and implementation documents as markdown files in my repo. Antigravity's artifacts disappear into the ether my markdown files live in version control forever.

I also keep my settings on Request Review mode rather than letting agents commit and merge autonomously. Call me old fashioned, but I've had agents try to merge half baked code at 3 AM, and I'm not risking that again.

Pricing: Free Now, Premium Later

Right now, Antigravity is available in two tiers:

Individual Plan: $0/month (Public Preview)

  • Access to Gemini 3 Pro, Flash, Claude Sonnet & Opus 4.5
  • Unlimited Tab completions
  • Unlimited Command requests
  • Generous weekly rate limits

Developer Plan via Google One (Recommended)

  • Everything in Individual, plus more generous rate limits that refresh every 5 hours
  • Requires a Google AI Pro or Ultra subscription

What about the future? Google hasn't announced official pricing post-preview, but expect this to follow the Cursor model: a free tier with limits, and a paid tier ($20-30/month) for serious users.

For junior developers or hobbyists, the free tier is honestly generous. For professionals shipping daily, the Developer plan via Google One feels like a no-brainer.




Security Concerns: The "chmod 777" Incident

Let's address the elephant in the room. Early testers reported an incident where an Antigravity agent ran chmod 777 on a production directory basically giving every file on the system full read/write/execute permissions. That's a massive security risk.

Google's response: They've since added guardrails to flag dangerous commands before execution. Agents now require explicit user approval for system-level changes.

Should you worry? If you're running Antigravity locally on your dev machine, you're relatively safe. If you're pointing it at production environments... maybe don't. At least not yet.

My rule: Never give AI agents write access to production. Use them for local development, staging environments, and internal tools—not live user-facing systems.

What Developers Are Actually Saying

I asked around in Discord servers and Reddit threads. Here's the honest feedback:

The Good:

  • "It's the first AI IDE that doesn't feel like a chatbot taped to VS Code." – u/dev_overflow
  • "The parallel agent thing is genuinely useful for grunt work." – Sarah, Senior Dev at a fintech startup
  • "Finally, an IDE that understands context across multiple files." – codewithjosh on X

The Bad:

  • "Artifacts are cool, but they should integrate with Git, not replace it." – Jake, Open Source Maintainer
  • "The autonomous mode is too aggressive. I need tighter controls." – Multiple users
  • "Still buggy. Had agents overwrite each other's work twice." – Early adopter feedback

The consensus? Antigravity is incredibly promising but still rough around the edges. It's in public preview for a reason.

Should You Switch From VS Code + Copilot?

Here's my honest take:

Switch if:

  • You regularly work on large features that involve multiple files
  • You want faster responses than Copilot provides
  • You're willing to babysit agents occasionally
  • The Agentic Browser fits your workflow (web dev, QA automation)

Stick with Copilot if:

  • You need rock-solid stability for mission-critical work
  • You prefer tighter, more predictable AI assistance
  • You're not ready to trust autonomous agents

For me? I'm staying with Antigravity, but I'm keeping it on a leash. Request review mode, local-only testing, and markdown documentation outside the IDE. It's faster, more capable, and frankly, more interesting than anything else I've tried.

Final Thoughts

Google Antigravity isn't perfect. It's ambitious, occasionally reckless, and still finding its footing. But it's also the first AI IDE that feels like it's actually trying to change how we work not just how we type.

If you're a junior developer looking to stay ahead of AI coding trends, this is worth experimenting with. Just keep one hand on the keyboard and one eye on the commit history.

Download it, try the free tier, and see if the hype matches your workflow. For me, it's been a game-changer. For you? Maybe, maybe not.

But either way, welcome to the Agentic Era. Things are about to get weird.


Want to dive deeper into Google Antigravity? Here are the official resources I used for this review:

Disclaimer: This review is based on my personal experience with Google Antigravity during its public preview phase. Features, pricing, and performance may change as the product evolves.


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