University of Kwazulu-Natal

An Honest Review Of Google Antigravity Dev Community

Bonisiwe Shabane
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an honest review of google antigravity dev community

So, for the last year, if you wanted the best AI coding experience, you were paying $20 a month for Cursor. It’s been the king. But there is a new competitor in the ring. And yes, it’s a VS Code fork. But no, it’s not from some random startup. It’s called Antigravity.

And right now, during the preview, it is fully, 100% free. You get access to their newest, models like Gemini 3, full browser orchestration, and an entirely new way to manage code, without swiping a credit card. Now, usually when Google releases a developer tool, it’s either incredible or it gets killed in six months. I’ve been daily driving Antigravity for the past week, digging into the code, and honestly? It’s a bit of both. It is one of the most promising pieces of software I’ve seen this year, and also, at times, the single most frustrating editor I have ever used.

We need to talk about the "Agent-First" workflow, the crazy Gemini 3 benchmarks, and the fact that this might actually just be a zombie version of another editor called Windsurf. Let’s get into it. So, first things first. If you peel back the skin, this is VS Code. If you go into the "About" section, you see the VS Code OSS version. But Google has done a lot of work to hide that.

Google Antigravity feels promising on the surface, but in real-world developer usage, it struggles with some of the most critical aspects of productivity. The biggest issue is poor memory of project context. It frequently forgets file structures, previously shared code, and architectural decisions within the same session. This makes it difficult to build anything non-trivial because you end up re-explaining the same context repeatedly. Another major limitation is weak understanding of reusability and patterns. When you try to enforce coding rules, reusable components, or architectural constraints, the model often ignores them or applies them inconsistently across responses.

It also struggles with maintaining conversation rules and constraints. Even when you clearly define guidelines (e.g., “always use this structure”, “never do X”, “follow these conventions”), it tends to drift over time, which breaks workflows that depend on consistency. In short, while it may be okay for quick questions, it’s not reliable for serious development work where memory, structure, and long-term context actually matter. I finally got access to Google Antigravity, the new "agentic" IDE that everyone has been talking about since the launch last week. I’ve spent the last 48 hours building with it, and honestly? It feels less like coding and more like being a project manager for a team of super-fast robots.

If you’re in dev or digital marketing, you need to see this. Here is my honest review of how it’s changing the game. Opening Antigravity felt familiar (it’s based on VS Code), but the workflow is entirely different. Instead of typing <div> tags, I opened the Mission Control view. I typed: "Build a high-converting landing page for a luxury villa rental, complete with a booking form and an image gallery." Then, I watched the magic happen.

The AI "agents" didn't just spit out code; they created a task list, opened a browser to test their own work, and started fixing their own bugs before I could even spot them. Our guides are based on hands-on testing and verified sources. Each article is reviewed for accuracy and updated regularly to ensure current, reliable information.Read our editorial policy. Artificial intelligence has been creeping into development workflows for years, but most tools still behave like glorified autocompleters. When Google unveiled Antigravity alongside its Gemini 3 launch on 18 November 2025, I was intrigued. The company pitched it as an agent‑first development environment designed to offload more than just line‑by‑line coding.

It promises autonomous agents that can edit files, run commands, and test applications, all while documenting their work with human-readable artifacts. Rather than passively generating snippets, Antigravity aims to orchestrate entire tasks across the editor, terminal, and browser. I decided to spend a week using it as my primary IDE to see whether it lives up to the hype and how it compares with existing AI coding tools. Google Antigravity is a free, cross‑platform IDE built on a fork of Visual Studio Code. It integrates Gemini 3 Pro by default but can also run Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 4.5 and an open‑source GPT model, giving users a choice of language models. This is going to be my first review of Antigravity after using it for 2 days.

There are some minor bugs which I hope get fixed in the coming days. Login issue - When you log in to the IDE, it redirects you to the browser and that dialog box comes up, but after clicking on allow, it still doesn’t redirect back to the... Syntax and Error Solving issue - While its design is the best amongst website designers like Lovable, Bolt, Replit, and Bubble, and also the best amongst AI IDEs like Windsurf and Cursor, its error-solving... After fixing one error, there will be another, and the majority of the time it’s a syntax error, like a missing bracket or a closing tag placed wrong. Photo upload - When a pic is uploaded and then reverted, those pics get removed. Revert issue: When reverting, it misses some comments, etc., in the file.

Revert means revert, and all code until that point should be removed. So, for the last year, if you wanted the best AI coding experience, you were paying $20 a month for Cursor. It’s been the king. But there is a new competitor in the ring. And yes, it’s a VS Code fork. But no, it’s not from some random startup.

It’s called Antigravity. And right now, during the preview, it is fully, 100% free. You get access to their newest, models like Gemini 3, full browser orchestration, and an entirely new way to manage code, without swiping a credit card. Now, usually when Google releases a developer tool, it’s either incredible or it gets killed in six months. I’ve been daily driving Antigravity for the past week, digging into the code, and honestly? It’s a bit of both.

It is one of the most promising pieces of software I’ve seen this year, and also, at times, the single most frustrating editor I have ever used. We need to talk about the "Agent-First" workflow, the crazy Gemini 3 benchmarks, and the fact that this might actually just be a zombie version of another editor called Windsurf. Let’s get into it. So, first things first. If you peel back the skin, this is VS Code. If you go into the "About" section, you see the VS Code OSS version.

But Google has done a lot of work to hide that. Our guides are based on hands-on testing and verified sources. Each article is reviewed for accuracy and updated regularly to ensure current, reliable information.Read our editorial policy. Artificial intelligence has been creeping into development workflows for years, but most tools still behave like glorified autocompleters. When Google unveiled Antigravity alongside its Gemini 3 launch on 18 November 2025, I was intrigued. There are moments in technology when tools arrive with so much noise, so many flashy thumbnails, and so much hype that the real story gets buried under layers of “install this, click that, next-next-next.”...

So in this article, instead of repeating the usual “download here” instructions or dramatic claims like “VS Code is dead,” we’ll walk together through what AntiGravity really is, why Google built it, what it... This is not a sales pitch.This is not an installation guide.This is a deep technical narrative, based on practical exploration and testing. Let’s start from the very beginning—with the experience you see right after launching AntiGravity for the first time. Before we explore the power of this tool, it helps to settle into the environment it creates. Why It Matters - first improession - Google’s new IDE, Antigravity, is not “just another editor.”It’s the first intelligence-native engineering environment built with testing, automation workflows, and fast debugging at its core. After installing and using it locally, I can confidently say:

Thanks for reading ai-test-zone! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. 👉 Test automation that used to take hours now takes minutes👉 Debugging becomes time-travel, not trial-and-error👉 Architecture, mocks, and CI/CD become visible and predictable👉 QA, SDETs, and Test Architects finally get a first-class IDE What makes Antigravity fundamentally different

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