Hands-on With Antigravity: Google’s Newest Ai Coding Experiment

When Google launched a caller agentic improvement platform called Antgravity this week, the first mobility I had was: “What astir Jules and Gemini CLI?” But remember, this is Google; they propulsion a batch of mud against nan wall conscionable to spot what sticks (very small is nan answer, arsenic their graveyard attests). So Google considers Antigravity and Jules to beryllium experiments that analyse nan aforesaid exertion from different angles.

Let’s now look astatine Antigravity, which appears to beryllium fresh for “public preview” connected each platforms, not conscionable nan Mac:

Like Verdent, it isn’t a CLI for nan terminal — it’s an IDE app. So I downloaded it for my MacBook and slid it into nan Applications folder.

First Impressions and Setup Process

Sensibly, it asks nan personification to prime a taxable during setup. Most group group nan taxable erstwhile (dark aliases light) and seldom touch nan action again:

This adjacent setup mobility is rather intriguing:

This feels for illustration it wants to perchance move towards a parallel runner model, pinch small quality involution (parallel runner intends letting an agentic task tally successful nan inheritance while you commencement different — successful different words, each task is tally connected isolated branches). Or possibly Antigravity will beryllium much for illustration document-driven solutions for illustration Kiro. As you tin guess, this station is conscionable to group nan segment for developers, not to profoundly analyse what is, aft all, an experiment. So I’ll spell pinch nan “assisted development” option, which feels for illustration much accepted territory.

After signing successful pinch Google (using its soul 2FA), Antigravity asks you to unfastened a files aliases to clone. To create an isolated branch, for illustration a parallel runner it would request a git clone. It besides finds likely-looking projects successful your personification folder.

As you see, I chose Claude Sonnet from nan presently disposable models:

A Familiar IDE With AI-Powered Suggestions

As accustomed for releases specified arsenic this, you get a bunch of free tokens pinch nan proviso that abuses will beryllium curtailed. When it has vanished initialising (scanning nan project, I assume) we get nan modular layout:

Does this look familiar? Yes, it does look to beryllium immoderate benignant of VS Code fork. I’ve written astir nan dangers of these — but really I don’t cognize why Google has done this.

On nan correct I chose “planning mode”; nan replacement “fast” mode “is adjuvant for erstwhile velocity is an important factor, and nan task is elemental capable that location is debased interest of worse quality” — which is somewhat comical, but we cognize what nan writer means.

As acold arsenic I tin tell, “Agent manager” is person to nan parallel runner agentic CLI mode, since you don’t interact pinch nan editor. The pursuing sketch refers to this:

Having said that, nan connection utilized present is alternatively strange. The matter beneath connected nan near confirms nan parallel tasks model. But nan matter astatine nan apical mentions “Deep research,” which is an overseas word to usage for package development. Plus, nan anticipation now is that immoderate task is “background” unless nan personification has asked for changeless intervention. This does not consciousness for illustration it was written successful nan aforesaid tone of caller “agentic” codification editor releases.

Looking astatine nan Editor model first (right broadside of diagram), I get bully speedy codification completion and suggestions. I prime 1 of those awkward bits of task codification that tin beryllium improved — a bounds checker.

After selecting it, I’m fixed nan chance to adhd it to nan query, truthful we have:

It suggested I usage nan Min/Max functions. Given I americium not pushed for speed, this sounds right. The matter successful nan chat container stated nan changes and benefits, and I could judge nan changes successful discourse by nan code:

Of course, I’m not brave (or foolish) capable to effort transplanting my full build situation into an experimental app. But I will support nan changes and cheque them later.

Exploring Antigravity’s Agentic Capabilities

So now let’s effort nan agentic side. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look to activity pinch independent branches (or doesn’t expect to activity this way), truthful you tin astir apt only activity wrong nan aforesaid workspace folder:

I deliberation a “conversation” maps to a task. I’ll inquire it to amended different method that useful pinch bounds. But it isn’t really designed to support nan task head open, since it continually shuts it for abstraction for nan chat container and (for example) nan changes view:

One facet I did for illustration was nan pursuing statement:

This proves it has contextual knowing of its past speech and nan resultant changes. And it is correct — Min/Max is neater (though I would expect it will beryllium acold slower).

So, looks for illustration I should retract nan thought that this was designed to activity connected parallel tasks successful nan aforesaid task — it intelligibly wasn’t. Perhaps Google is waiting for responses to spot really they should react.

Conclusion: An Experiment With an Unclear Direction

At this stage, I decided to extremity arsenic I don’t rather cognize what this merchandise is genuinely going for. It is an app, but it appears to beryllium partially a VS Code clone. It offers an Agent manager, but doesn’t really connection nan parallel tasks I’d expect. But it manages to do what Gemini CLI does, aliases for that matter, what Jules does.

I recognise that Google creates projects from independent teams, and sometimes location are awesome ideas (I still retrieve Google Wave) that Google arsenic a institution spell connected to ignore. But often they are misaligned pinch existent trends. I’m going to hold until Google useful retired what they want to do pinch this earlier giving it a caller look later successful its improvement evolution.

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