Google enters the AI-first IDE battle with Antigravity, reportedly forking open source VS Code to build a multi-agent development hub powered by Gemini 3 and other top models.
Google has intensified the AI-driven developer tools race with the launch of Google Antigravity, a new agent-first integrated development environment that appears to fork the open source Visual Studio Code foundation. While Google has not officially confirmed the connection, reporter David Ramel notes: “When asked, Google Antigravity unequivocally said it’s a VS Code fork, for whatever that’s worth.”
By potentially building on the open source editor at the heart of modern software development, Google directly challenges Microsoft’s ongoing move to make VS Code the leading open-source AI editor. Antigravity aims to become “the home base for software development in the era of agents”, shifting away from prompt-driven workflows and enabling autonomous task planning and execution across editor, terminal, and browser surfaces.
Antigravity introduces two key interaction modes. The Editor View keeps coding familiar with inline AI assistance, while the Manager View acts as a mission-control dashboard where users spawn and orchestrate multiple agents working in parallel. To boost trust and oversight, agents generate clear artifacts, including task lists, implementation plans, screenshots, and browser recordings, designed for easier human validation.
A strong feedback system allows developers to comment on artifacts without stopping the agent, while a knowledge base enables continuous learning from past code and workflows. The environment is built to support multiple AI models, including Gemini 3, Claude 4.5 Sonnet, and OpenAI’s GPT-OSS, providing flexibility rarely seen in IDEs.
Available today in public preview at no cost, Antigravity runs on macOS, Linux, and Windows. Whether fully forked or partially inspired by VS Code, Google’s entry raises competitive stakes and reinforces that open-source foundations are driving the future of agentic development.
