Notes about Google Antigravity used in Google AI Pro plan; Jules vs Antigravity
- Has a free plan
- Recommended plan is "Developer plan via Google One" - "Leverage Antigravity as your daily driver via your Google AI Pro or Ultra subscription."
- Chose import settings from VSCode, Dark mode
- Going with default "Review-driven development" (recommended). Later may try out "Agent-driven development"
- Went with some other defaults
- Faced my first agent crash.
- But it had made the changes correctly.
- After understanding the requirement, identifying which files have to be changed/deleted.
- Doing those changes.
- Testing the app, verifying its results and providing a verification report.
🧠Purpose & Core Concept
• Google Jules
A headless autonomous coding agent that works outside of an IDE.
You create tasks/tickets (for example, via GitHub Issues), and Jules runs in the background to plan, write, and commit code changes.
It doesn’t provide an editor UI — it produces pull requests once work is done.
Best for maintenance tasks like upgrading dependencies, writing tests, fixing well-defined bugs. (inferred from earlier info on Jules context)
• Google Antigravity
A full AI-powered Integrated Development Environment (IDE) with an agent-first design.
Combines a traditional code editor with multi-agent orchestration: agents can edit code, run commands in a terminal, open a browser, and validate outputs.
Provides visible interface panels for managing agents and their outputs inside the IDE. (Wikipedia)
💻 Workflow & Interaction
| Feature | Jules | Antigravity |
|---|---|---|
| User Interface | No UI — task specification only | Full IDE with editor + agent manager |
| Execution Style | Asynchronous work via background tasks | Interactive + asynchronous agent workflows in IDE |
| How You Give Instructions | Written tickets / issues | Natural-language and in-editor commands |
| Output Delivery | GitHub pull requests/commits | Instant code edits in editor + agent artifacts |
| Agent Control | Minimal live control once task is submitted | Real-time oversight and steering of agents |
| Best Fit | Defined tasks, simple automation | Complex feature creation, refactoring, large workflows |
Antigravity’s interface supports parallel agent orchestration (mission control view) and artifact creation (plans, screenshots, and automated test results) to verify work. (ShipAi)
🚀 Typical Use Cases
Jules
✔ Ideal when you have repetitive development work you can assign as discrete tasks
✔ Maintenance, tests, documentation, basic code quality improvements
Antigravity
✔ Full project development within an IDE
✔ Complex logic tasks, cross-file refactoring, integrated test execution
✔ Immediate developer collaboration with AI
In other words, Jules is more like assigning tasks to an independent assistant, while Antigravity embeds the AI into your live development workflow. (WellWells)
🧩 Model & Platform Differences
Jules typically runs externally (e.g., in cloud) and focuses on task completion with GitHub integration.
Antigravity runs locally on your machine (Windows/macOS/Linux), includes agents with access to editor, terminal, and browser, and supports multiple models — not just Google’s (e.g., Claude and OpenAI OSS variants). (Wikipedia)
📌 Strengths & Limitations
Jules
Strengths
Low-touch automation; works without manual oversight once a ticket is posted.
Good for long-running, well-scoped tasks.
Limitations
No real-time control or visualization during execution.
Less suited for exploratory development or interactive debugging.
Antigravity
Strengths
Multimodal agent access (editor, terminal, browser).
Agents can generate Artifacts that help you verify or guide work.
Supports multiple AI models.
Limitations
Still in preview, with wide-ranging user reports of bugs, errors, and instability.
Because agents can execute code and commands, there are potential security and safety concerns that need careful user management. (The Indian Express)
🧠Philosophical Difference
Jules: Work submission model — you submit a ticket, get a completed job back.
Antigravity: Interactive agent ecosystem — you and AI co-develop, inspect, and refine work together.
🟡 Bottom Line
If Google Jules is like hiring an assistant who returns a completed task later, then Antigravity is like having an AI co-developer sitting next to you in your IDE — planning, executing, and verifying code interactively.
They share the same broader goal (automating development with AI), but they target different parts of the workflow:
Jules focuses on headless task automation.
Antigravity focuses on agent-first interactive development. (Wikipedia)
If you want, I can also break this down into best practices for when to choose one over the other depending on your project size, team workflow, and tolerance for instability.
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