Google Antigravity IDE: 10 Best Features Every Developer Should Know

If you’ve been keeping an eye on AI-powered development tools, you’ve probably heard the buzz around Google Antigravity IDE — Google’s brand-new agent-first development platform that launched in public preview in November 2025. But what exactly makes it different from Cursor, Windsurf, or GitHub Copilot?

In this guide, we’ll break down the 10 best Google Antigravity IDE features every developer should know, with real-world use cases, practical examples, and step-by-step explanations. Whether you’re a seasoned engineer or a beginner just getting started with AI-assisted coding, this article will show you exactly what Antigravity can do — and why it represents a genuine leap forward in how we build software.

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What Is Google Antigravity IDE?

Google Antigravity is an AI-powered integrated development environment (IDE) built by Google and announced on November 18, 2025, alongside the release of Gemini 3. It’s a heavily modified fork of Visual Studio Code, but the similarities to a traditional code editor end quickly once you look under the hood.

Antigravity enables developers to delegate complex coding tasks to autonomous AI agents powered primarily by Google’s Gemini 3 Pro, Gemini 3 Deep Think, and Gemini 3 Flash models.

The core philosophy behind Antigravity is what Google calls the “agent-first” paradigm — a fundamental shift away from the chatbot-style AI assistants developers are used to. Instead of an AI that simply suggests the next line of code, Antigravity’s agents autonomously plan, execute, verify, and iterate on complex engineering tasks from start to finish.

Unlike traditional IDEs or even first-generation AI coding assistants, Antigravity treats agents as first-class citizens. Agents don’t just suggest code — they plan entire features, execute across multiple surfaces (editor, terminal, browser), verify their own work, and learn from your feedback to continuously improve.

Best of all? Google Antigravity is 100% free during the public preview with generous rate limits on Gemini 3 Pro usage.

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Feature 1: Agent Manager — Mission Control for Your Code

The most transformative feature in Antigravity is the Agent Manager, and it’s the first thing you see when you open the IDE.

What Is the Agent Manager?

Upon launching Antigravity, the user is typically greeted not by a file tree, but by the Agent Manager. This interface acts as a Mission Control dashboard. It is designed for high-level orchestration, allowing developers to spawn, monitor, and interact with multiple agents operating asynchronously across different workspaces or tasks.

Think of it like being an architect rather than a bricklayer. You define the high-level objectives — “add a user authentication system,” “refactor the payment module,” “write end-to-end tests for the checkout flow” — and the Agent Manager assigns dedicated agent instances to each task.

How It Works in Practice

1. Open Antigravity and navigate to the Agent Manager view
2. Describe your task in plain English (e.g., “Build a REST API endpoint for user login with JWT authentication”)
3. Watch as the agent creates a plan, writes the code, runs the terminal to test it, and verifies the result in the browser
4. Review the generated Artifacts and leave feedback inline if something needs adjusting

The UI provides a visualization of these parallel work streams, displaying the status of each agent, the Artifacts they have produced (plans, results, diffs), and any pending requests for human approval. This architecture addresses a key limitation of previous IDEs that had more of a chatbot experience, which were linear and synchronous.

Real-World Use Case

Imagine you’re working on a large SaaS product. While you’re deep in the Editor view tackling a tricky frontend bug, you can simultaneously spawn a background agent to handle migrating your database schema, another to write unit tests for last week’s feature, and a third to do a security audit of your authentication code — all without switching context.

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Feature 2: Dual View System — Editor View and Manager View

Antigravity doesn’t force you to choose between traditional coding and agentic automation. It offers two distinct views that cater to different working styles and task types.

Editor View: The Familiar Foundation

The Editor View: When you need to be hands-on, you get a state-of-the-art, AI-powered IDE equipped with tab completions and inline commands for the synchronous workflow you already know.

This is your standard VS Code-style interface, but supercharged with AI. You get intelligent tab completions, inline commands, syntax highlighting, and all the extensions you’re already used to. Since Antigravity is built on VS Code, you can import your existing settings and keybindings without any friction.

Manager View: Where the Magic Happens

The Manager Surface: This is where the shift happens. It’s a dedicated interface where you can spawn, orchestrate, and observe multiple agents working asynchronously across different workspaces. Antigravity allows you to offload end-to-end tasks that previously required constant context switching.

When to Use Each View

Scenario	Best View
Writing a specific function manually	Editor View
Debugging a tricky error you understand well	Editor View
Building an entire feature from scratch	Manager View
Running tests, migrations, or audits	Manager View
Reviewing and refining AI-generated code	Both
Learning a new codebase	Manager View

The beauty of this dual-view system is that you never have to fully commit to one mode. Experienced developers will naturally flow between both, leveraging human intuition where it matters and delegating repetitive tasks to agents.

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Feature 3: Autonomous Browser Integration

This is where Antigravity truly separates itself from every other AI coding tool on the market. The IDE includes a built-in, agent-controlled browser — meaning agents don’t just write code, they can actually use your application to test it.

What Can the Browser Agent Do?

On the first start of the Browser feature, you will be asked to perform the necessary setup. After you complete this step, you are able to use the browser during work with the IDE and simplify debugging tasks, improve efficiency of applying fixes, and investigate potential issues.

Concretely, here’s what an agent can do with browser access:

• Launch your local development server
• Navigate to specific pages and click through user flows
• Take screenshots at key points to verify the UI looks correct
• Fill out forms, submit data, and check responses
• Record video walkthroughs of completed features
• Detect visual bugs or broken layouts automatically

Real-World Example

Say you ask an agent: “Add a dark mode toggle to the settings page.” Without browser integration, the agent writes the code and hands it back to you. With browser integration, it writes the code, launches localhost, navigates to the settings page, clicks the toggle, takes a screenshot to confirm the dark theme applied correctly, and attaches that screenshot to its report — all without you lifting a finger.

Antigravity also records videos while working with the application through its browser, so you can find these recordings and maybe use them for demos for your clients.

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Feature 4: Artifacts — Verifiable, Trustworthy Agent Output

One of the biggest challenges with autonomous AI agents is trust. How do you know what the agent actually did? How do you verify its reasoning without wading through thousands of lines of raw tool calls?

Antigravity solves this with Artifacts.

What Are Artifacts?

Delegating work to an agent requires trust, but scrolling through raw tool calls is tedious. Antigravity solves this by having agents generate Artifacts — tangible deliverables like task lists, implementation plans, screenshots, and browser recordings.

Each Artifact is a human-readable summary of what the agent planned, did, and verified. Think of it like a pull request description that writes itself — but richer, including visual evidence like screenshots.

Types of Artifacts

• Task lists — What the agent planned to do, step by step
• Implementation plans — Architectural decisions and reasoning
• Code diffs — Exactly what changed and why
• Screenshots — Visual confirmation of UI changes
• Browser recordings — Full video walkthroughs of tested flows
• Test results — Pass/fail summaries for automated tests

Giving Feedback on Artifacts

These Artifacts allow you to verify the agent’s logic at a glance. If something looks off, you can leave feedback directly on the Artifact — similar to commenting on a Google Doc — and the agent will incorporate your input without stopping its execution flow.

This is a crucial design choice. Traditional agentic tools require you to interrupt the agent to redirect it. In Antigravity, you can leave an async comment — “Use a UUID instead of an auto-increment ID here” — and the agent incorporates it on its next pass without missing a beat.

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Feature 5: Multi-Model Support — Choose the Right AI for Every Task

Antigravity doesn’t lock you into a single AI model. It supports multiple state-of-the-art models, letting you pick the best tool for each specific job.

Supported Models

Antigravity supports three powerful models: Gemini 3 Pro (Google’s latest), Claude Sonnet 4.5 (Anthropic), and GPT-OSS (OpenAI’s open-source models). You can switch between them based on your needs.

When to Use Each Model

Model	Best For
Gemini 3 Pro	General coding, UI generation, Google Cloud integrations
Claude Sonnet 4.5	Complex logic, security review, nuanced reasoning
GPT-OSS	Open-source projects, alternative perspective on architecture

Real developers using Antigravity have noticed that different models shine in different areas. As one developer noted, Claude Sonnet and Gemini 3 tend to work best for most tasks, with Gemini 3 being particularly strong for UI-related work.

Why This Matters

No single AI model is perfect at everything. By letting you switch models mid-project — or even route different tasks to different models automatically — Antigravity ensures you always have access to the best intelligence available for the problem at hand.

Pro Tip: Use Gemini 3 Pro for fast iteration on UI components and Claude Sonnet 4.5 for security-sensitive code or complex architectural decisions.

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Feature 6: Knowledge Base — An AI That Learns Your Codebase

One of the most frustrating aspects of AI coding assistants is that they have no memory. Every new conversation starts from scratch. Antigravity fixes this with a persistent Knowledge Base that grows smarter over time.

How the Knowledge Base Works

Antigravity treats learning as a core primitive, allowing agents to save useful context and code snippets to a knowledge base to improve future tasks.

Every time an agent completes a task in your codebase, it can save relevant patterns, conventions, and decisions to the Knowledge Base. Over time, the agent develops a deep understanding of:

• Your preferred coding style and patterns
• Project-specific conventions and architectural decisions
• Recurring patterns in how your team structures features
• Common bugs and how they’ve been fixed in the past
• Your preferred libraries and frameworks

Real-World Impact

Imagine onboarding to a new project. In a traditional IDE, you’d spend days reading documentation and asking senior developers basic questions. With Antigravity’s Knowledge Base populated by previous agent work, a new agent (or a new team member using the agent) can immediately understand the codebase’s conventions and produce code that fits seamlessly.

Its agent can tap a knowledge base to learn from past work or contribute new learnings.

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Feature 7: Parallel Agent Execution

One of Antigravity’s most powerful productivity multipliers is the ability to run multiple agents simultaneously across different workspaces and tasks.

Why Parallel Execution Changes Everything

In traditional development — even with AI assistance — you work linearly. You finish one task, then start the next. With Antigravity’s parallel agent execution, you can:

• Have one agent building a new feature
• While another agent writes tests for last week’s features
• While a third agent refactors legacy code in a separate branch
• While you focus on the highest-priority, most nuanced work that requires human judgment

Agents work independently on different tasks, coordinating seamlessly to deliver complex features.

Step-by-Step: Setting Up Parallel Agents

1. Open the Agent Manager view
2. Click “New Agent” to spawn your first agent and describe its task
3. Click “New Agent” again to spawn a second agent with a different task
4. Monitor both agents’ progress via the Inbox and side panel notifications
5. Review Artifacts from both agents and leave feedback as needed

Real-World Example

A real developer shared that thanks to the parallel execution of multiple tasks, they managed to build an MVP of a Secure File Sharing application after several hours of coding and debugging issues. What might have taken a solo developer several days was compressed into a single productive session.

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Feature 8: Spec-Based Development Support

One of the more underrated features in Antigravity is its support for spec-based development — the ability to give agents a structured specification document and have them build to that spec systematically.

What Is Spec-Based Development?

Instead of describing a task conversationally, you provide a structured specification: requirements, acceptance criteria, technical constraints, and success metrics. The agent uses this spec as its north star throughout execution.

Why This Matters

Spec-based approach allows you as a user to control the process, structure your work, and get predictable results, and simplify calculation of the overall progress.

For teams that already use tools like Linear, Jira, or Notion for specs, this is a game-changer. You can copy a well-written ticket directly into Antigravity and let the agent handle implementation, with full traceability between the spec and the code produced.

Benefits of Spec-Based Development with Antigravity

• More predictable output — agents work toward defined acceptance criteria
• Better traceability — every code change is tied to a spec requirement
• Easier progress tracking — completion percentage maps to spec items
• Reduced scope creep — agents stay focused on the defined task

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Feature 9: Automated Testing and Security Review

Building features is only half the job. Antigravity agents can also automatically write tests and conduct security reviews as part of the development workflow — not as an afterthought.

Automatic Test Generation

Test automation is introduced together with new features. As a person who worked in test automation, I understand how much time you can save by introducing tests (unit, integration, e2e) to the SDLC. They help you to avoid a large number of issues and perform testing right after introducing changes to the source code without a need to involve QA engineers every time the test environment was rebuilt with new changes.

When an agent builds a new feature, it can automatically generate:

• Unit tests for individual functions and components
• Integration tests for how modules interact
• End-to-end tests using the built-in browser (similar to Cypress or Playwright)

Security Code Review

Antigravity provides the opportunity to conduct high-level secure code reviews and receive recommendations on possible remediation steps. It helps to ship applications with minimal to no number of common security vulnerabilities, enhancing the application protection and increasing trust from end users.

For teams building production applications, this is invaluable. Catching a SQL injection vulnerability or an insecure authentication flow during development — rather than after a breach — is worth far more than the time saved by any AI code completion feature.

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Feature 10: One-Click Cloud Deployment

Rounding out the top 10 is a feature that closes the loop on the entire development lifecycle: direct cloud deployment from within the IDE.

How It Works

Deploy your applications directly from the IDE to cloud platforms with one click.

Once your agent has built, tested, and verified a feature, you can deploy it to your cloud platform of choice without ever leaving Antigravity. This tight integration with Google Cloud (and other platforms) eliminates the context-switching between IDE, terminal, and cloud console that eats up so much developer time.

The Full Development Loop in Antigravity

Here’s what a complete feature development cycle looks like in Antigravity, from idea to production:

1. Define — Describe the feature in Agent Manager or provide a spec
2. Plan — Agent generates an implementation plan (Artifact)
3. Build — Agent writes code across editor and terminal
4. Test — Agent runs automated tests and browser verification
5. Review — Developer reviews Artifacts and leaves feedback
6. Refine — Agent incorporates feedback and iterates
7. Deploy — One-click deployment to cloud platform
8. Learn — Knowledge Base updates with new patterns

This is the first time an IDE has genuinely covered all eight steps without requiring the developer to leave the environment.

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Getting Started with Google Antigravity IDE

Ready to try it yourself? Here’s how to get up and running in minutes.

System Requirements

Component	Minimum	Recommended
RAM	8GB	16GB+
CPU	4 cores	8 cores
Storage	10GB	SSD preferred
OS	Windows 10 / macOS 12+ / Ubuntu 20+	Latest version
Internet	Required	Fast connection recommended

Installation Steps

1. Visit antigravity.google/download
2. Download the installer for your operating system (Windows, macOS, or Linux)
3. Run the installer and follow the setup wizard
4. Sign in with your Google Account
5. Configure your preferred keybindings (VS Code settings import automatically)
6. Choose your default AI model
7. Set your agent autonomy level (Review-driven is recommended for beginners)

Autonomy Levels Explained

Antigravity gives you control over how much the agent does before checking in with you:

• Review-driven (recommended) — Agent makes decisions but pauses for your approval at key milestones
• Fully autonomous — Agent runs end-to-end with minimal interruption
• Step-by-step — Agent pauses after every action for your confirmation

For most developers, Review-driven strikes the perfect balance between speed and control.

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Antigravity vs. Other AI IDEs

How does Antigravity stack up against the competition?

Feature	Antigravity	Cursor	Windsurf	GitHub Copilot
Agent Manager	✅	❌	❌	❌
Browser integration	✅ Built-in	❌	❌	❌
Multi-model support	✅ (3 models)	✅	✅	⚠️ Limited
Parallel agents	✅	❌	⚠️ Limited	❌
Artifacts system	✅	❌	❌	❌
Knowledge base	✅	⚠️ Limited	⚠️ Limited	❌
Cloud deployment	✅	❌	❌	⚠️ Limited
Price	Free (preview)	Paid	Paid	Paid

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Best Practices for Using Google Antigravity IDE

Getting the most out of Antigravity means knowing how to work with the agents, not just watch them work.

1. Write clear, detailed task descriptions. The more context you give an agent, the better its output. Don’t just say “add authentication” — say “add email and password authentication using JWT tokens, with a /login and /refresh endpoint, following our existing REST API conventions.”

2. Use spec-based development for complex features. For anything that will take more than a few hours to build, write a proper spec first. This gives the agent guardrails and makes reviewing Artifacts much easier.

3. Review Artifacts before the agent moves to the next phase. Don’t let agents run fully autonomous until you trust them with your codebase. Review implementation plans carefully — it’s much easier to catch a bad architectural decision in a plan than in 500 lines of code.

4. Leverage the Knowledge Base actively. When an agent does something particularly well, explicitly mark it for the Knowledge Base so future agents benefit from that pattern.

5. Use parallel agents for independent tasks. If two tasks don’t share code, run them in parallel. The time savings compound quickly across a long working session.

6. Start with Review-driven autonomy. Especially on a new project, keep the agent checking in with you. As you build trust and the Knowledge Base grows, you can gradually increase autonomy.

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Frequently Asked Questions About Google Antigravity IDE

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Key Takeaways

Google Antigravity IDE represents a genuine generational leap in developer tooling. Here’s a summary of the 10 features that make it essential for modern developers:

1. Agent Manager — Mission Control for orchestrating autonomous AI agents
2. Dual View System — Editor View for hands-on work, Manager View for delegation
3. Browser Integration — Agents that test your app in a real browser automatically
4. Artifacts System — Transparent, verifiable output you can review and annotate
5. Multi-Model Support — Gemini 3, Claude Sonnet 4.5, and GPT-OSS in one IDE
6. Knowledge Base — An AI that gets smarter about your codebase over time
7. Parallel Agent Execution — Multiple agents working simultaneously on different tasks
8. Spec-Based Development — Structured, predictable, traceable feature building
9. Automated Testing & Security Review — Tests and security checks baked into the workflow
10. One-Click Cloud Deployment — Close the loop from idea to production without leaving the IDE

The shift from AI-as-assistant to AI-as-agent is already happening, and Antigravity is the clearest expression of that shift available today.

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Actionable Next Steps

• Download Antigravity for free at antigravity.google/download and set it up in under 10 minutes
• Start with one delegated task — pick something you’ve been putting off and hand it to an Agent Manager agent
• Review the Artifacts carefully on your first few tasks to build intuition for how the agents think
• Gradually increase autonomy as your trust in the system grows and the Knowledge Base matures
• Explore the Google Codelabs guide for a structured, hands-on introduction to every major feature

Recommended Resource: The official Google Antigravity Codelabs walkthrough at codelabs.developers.google.com is the best place to get hands-on experience with every feature in a guided, beginner-friendly format.

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Tried Antigravity IDE already? Share your experience in the comments — especially what tasks you’ve been delegating to agents and how it’s changed your workflow.

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Resource:

• Fix “Gemini 3 Pro is no longer available” in Antigravity
• Fix “This Version of Antigravity Is No Longer Supported” Error