Antigravity CLI Deep Dive

On May 19, 2026 at Google I/O, the team behind Gemini CLI announced it was being transitioned into a new product: Antigravity CLI. The rewrite is in Go, the design target is keyboard-first remote work, and the agent backing it is the same harness that powers the Antigravity 2.0 desktop app. If you have been using Gemini CLI on a Google AI Pro or Ultra account, you have roughly thirty days to make the switch before requests stop serving on June 18, 2026.

1. The Announcement

The tweet above came from the team that ships the official Google CLI for Gemini. It does not announce a feature update. It announces a product replacement. The post-by-post sequence on May 19 was: a Google Developers Blog post titled “An important update: Transitioning Gemini CLI to Antigravity CLI”, a launch blog at antigravity.google for Antigravity CLI, a launch blog for Antigravity 2.0, and a public GitHub repository at github.com/google-antigravity/antigravity-cli.

Read together, the framing is unambiguous: Google has decided that “Gemini CLI” as a product name is over, and the entire developer-agent surface area is being unified under the Antigravity brand. The CLI is one of four product surfaces; the other three are Antigravity 2.0 (desktop GUI), Antigravity SDK (programmatic), and the Antigravity IDE (still shipping for now).

2. TL;DR

• Product: Antigravity CLI — a Terminal UI agent client
• Replaces: Gemini CLI (for individual-tier users)
• Language: Go (Gemini CLI was Node)
• Shared harness: same agent engine as Antigravity 2.0
• Installs: macOS, Linux, Windows (curl, PowerShell, or CMD)
• Auth: system keyring with Google Sign-In fallback; SSH-aware
• Supports: plugins, agent skills, MCP servers, hooks, subagents
• Async: the CLI orchestrates parallel background subagents
• Source: public repo at google-antigravity/antigravity-cli
• Migration: agy plugin import gemini converts extensions to plugins
• Gemini CLI sunset: June 18, 2026 for individual-tier accounts
• Enterprise carveout: Gemini CLI continues for Code Assist Standard/Enterprise and paid API keys

3. What Antigravity CLI Is

Per the official overview page: Antigravity CLI is the lightweight Terminal User Interface (TUI) surface of Antigravity. It brings the same core agentic capabilities as Antigravity 2.0 — multi-step reasoning, multi-file editing, tool calling, and conversation history — directly to your terminal.

The Google AI Developers account shipped a demo clip of the same product the same day, with the positioning compressed to one sentence:

Concretely, that means three things:

• It is a TUI, not a GUI. Antigravity CLI is meant to be driven from a terminal, not pointed at by a mouse. The README is explicit that it is “optimized for keyboard-driven workflows and remote SSH sessions with minimal resource overhead.”
• It shares an agent engine with Antigravity 2.0. The CLI is not running a separate model or a slimmer agent. It is running the same core agent harness as the desktop application, just with a different presentation layer.
• It is positioned for parallel use with 2.0. You can export a CLI conversation into Antigravity 2.0 to continue working with a richer GUI. Settings and permissions sync bidirectionally.

4. The Four-Surface Platform

Until this week, “Antigravity” meant an IDE. After May 19, 2026, it means a platform with four surfaces, all backed by the same core agent harness. Google DeepMind framed three of the four in a single tweet that same morning:

Adding the original Antigravity IDE, here is the full four-surface picture:

• Antigravity 2.0 — new standalone desktop app for macOS, Linux, and Windows. Agent-first, no IDE. Includes dynamic subagents, async task management, JSON hooks, and Scheduled Tasks (cron-style invocation). See our Gemini 3.5 Flash developer guide for the model context around 2.0.
• Antigravity CLI — the subject of this post. Terminal-first agent surface, rebuilt in Go.
• Antigravity SDK — programmatic surface for embedding the harness into your own apps. Announced alongside 2.0 and the CLI.
• Antigravity IDE — the original product. Still shipping, but the Agent Manager surface inside it is being deprecated in favor of the standalone 2.0 app in a future release.

The reason this matters for the CLI specifically: improvements to the core harness ship to every surface at once. A new tool the agent can call, a better planning loop, a new permission model — you do not wait for the CLI team to backport.

5. CLI vs Antigravity 2.0

Same engine, different ergonomics. The official feature table:

Practical reading: the CLI is what you reach for when you are on a remote box, on a slow connection, in a tmux pane, or just allergic to GUIs. The 2.0 desktop app is what you reach for when you want artefact previews, the visual review flow on diffs, voice input, and the Scheduled Tasks dashboard.

6. Installation

The README publishes three install commands. They are all one-liners that pull a shell script from antigravity.google/cli/install.*:

# macOS / Linux
curl -fsSL https://antigravity.google/cli/install.sh | bash

# Windows PowerShell
irm https://antigravity.google/cli/install.ps1 | iex

# Windows CMD
curl -fsSL https://antigravity.google/cli/install.cmd -o install.cmd && install.cmd && del install.cmd

After install, the binary is agy (not antigravity — important when scripting). Verify with agy --version. Antigravity CLI is also dual-distributed: the same project is published as a public Go repository at github.com/google-antigravity/antigravity-cli with a demo GIF and a links table pointing at the official docs.

7. Auth, Including Remote SSH

The CLI auths via the system keyring with a Google Sign-In fallback. Two flows worth knowing:

• Local: first run opens your default browser. Sign in with a Google account associated with Google AI Pro, Ultra, Gemini Code Assist, or an enterprise GCP project. The credential is stored in the system keyring.
• Remote / SSH: the CLI detects an SSH session and instead prints an authorization URL. You open the URL on your local machine, complete the OAuth flow, and the token gets pinned back to the SSH session. This was a notable pain point in early Gemini CLI flows; it is now a first-class case.
• Sign out: /logout clears saved credentials.

For enterprise access, you connect a GCP project during onboarding. The CLI then routes calls through that project for billing and quota. The official enterprise page covers the GCP project requirements; the consumer flow does not need one.

8. The Shared Agent Harness

This is the architectural decision that explains every other choice in the product. Both Antigravity CLI and Antigravity 2.0 run on the same core agent engine. From the official CLI blog post:

“A primary goal for the Antigravity CLI was the consolidation of a single agent harness across Google-built developer surfaces for more rapid future improvements.”

Three implications:

• Settings and permissions sync bidirectionally. A model permission set in 2.0 applies in the CLI, and vice versa. You do not maintain two allowlists.
• Conversations export sideways. Conversations are not shared across products by default, but you can pull a CLI conversation up in 2.0 via the @conversation dropdown to continue with the GUI.
• Improvements ship once. When Google ships a better tool-routing algorithm or a smarter planning loop into the harness, both surfaces get it on the same day. No CLI-team backport.

9. Context Files and Rules

Antigravity CLI reads the same context files Gemini CLI did:

• Workspace context: GEMINI.md and AGENTS.md from the active workspace directory.
• Global context: ~/.gemini/GEMINI.md, automatically loaded and enforced across all workspaces.

If you have rules files for the existing Gemini CLI flow, they keep working. For a structured cross-tool rules pattern, see our AGENTS.md guide and GEMINI.md system prompt guide.

10. Plugins (was: Extensions)

Gemini CLI shipped extensions as the package format for sharing capabilities. Antigravity CLI renames this surface to plugins— per the official docs, “the industry has standardized on the term”.

On first launch you get a migration prompt that converts Gemini CLI extensions to Antigravity plugins. If you skip it or install the CLI elsewhere, run the import explicitly:

agy plugin import gemini

Real output from the official docs, showing the import walking a multi-component extension:

[ok]    conductor
          - skills      : skipped (not found)
          - agents      : skipped (not found)
          ✔ commands    : 6 processed (converted to skills)
          - mcpServers  : skipped (not found)
          - hooks       : skipped (not found)
[ok]    google-workspace
          ✔ skills      : 6 processed
          - agents      : skipped (not found)
          ✔ commands    : 4 processed (converted to skills)
          ✔ mcpServers  : 1 processed
          - hooks       : skipped (not found)

Things to know: custom themes do not migrate; commands become skills (the older commands concept gets folded into the broader skills primitive); MCP servers move over but the config file location changes (see section 12).

11. Agent Skills

Agent skills are the smallest unit of reusable agent behavior — small files describing a slash command and what the agent should do when invoked. They came out of Gemini CLI and remain a first-class concept in Antigravity CLI, managed with the same /skills command.

Locations changed:

Global skills are picked up automatically, no action needed. Workspace skills in the older .gemini/skills/ folder need to be moved to .agents/skills/. For a deeper walkthrough on writing skills, see our Antigravity skills setup guide and mastering agent skills.

One missing piece worth flagging: Antigravity CLI does not yet have an equivalent of the gemini skills command for managing skills from the terminal. You either author skill files by hand or install via npx skills install.

12. MCP Servers

Antigravity CLI supports both local and remote MCP servers via the same /mcp command. Two config differences from Gemini CLI to watch for:

• Separate config file. Antigravity stores MCP server config in a dedicated mcp_config.json file, not inline in settings.json. Global: ~/.gemini/antigravity-cli/mcp_config.json. Workspace: .agents/mcp_config.json.
• Field rename. For remote MCP servers, Antigravity CLI uses serverUrl instead of url (or the deprecated httpUrl). A copied-over Gemini CLI config will fail silently on remote servers if you do not rename the field.

For background on MCP configuration patterns, see our MCP tutorial and the custom MCP server guide.

13. Hooks and Subagents

Both features carry over from Gemini CLI and the Antigravity 2.0 lineage:

• Hooks. Defined as JSON. They let you intercept and control the agent at specific lifecycle moments — before a tool call, after a file edit, on session start. This is the same JSON hook format introduced in Antigravity 2.0.
• Dynamic subagents. The main agent can spawn focused subagents for parallel work. This is how the CLI advertises async / background workflows: big refactors and multi-topic research that used to lock up a terminal session now run as subagents while you keep typing.

For the multi-agent pattern in practice, see our multi-agent orchestration walkthrough.

14. The Security Footnote

The README ships a warning block. It is short and worth quoting in full:

“AI coding agents are known to have certain security risks, including autonomous code execution, data exfiltration, prompt injection, and supply chain risks. Ensure that you monitor and verify all actions taken by the agent.”

The interactions data Google collects is opt-out-able from settings. The CLI defaults to data collection on consumer tiers. Enterprise behavior follows your GCP project policies. For a fuller treatment of the threat model and the controls worth tuning, see our Antigravity security guide and the dangerous commands prevention guide.

15. What It Is Not (Yet)

Things the official docs explicitly call out as not present in Antigravity CLI at launch:

• Custom themes don't migrate. Some Gemini CLI extensions include custom themes; those components are dropped during plugin import.
• No skills CLI command. Skills are still managed inside the agent via /skills, but there is no equivalent of gemini skills for terminal-level management. File authoring or npx skills install is the workaround.
• No 1:1 feature parity claim. Google explicitly says “there won't be 1:1 feature parity right out of the gate.” The promise is “the most critical features” — skills, hooks, subagents, plugins. If you depended on a specific peripheral Gemini CLI command, check before assuming.

16. Who Antigravity CLI Is For

17. FAQ

18. Verdict

If you only do one thing this week: install Antigravity CLI on the machine where you used Gemini CLI most, run agy plugin import gemini, and try a twenty-minute task you would normally run in the old CLI. You will know inside a single session whether the migration is going to be smooth.

Sources

• Google Developers Blog — An important update: Transitioning Gemini CLI to Antigravity CLI (May 19, 2026)
• @geminicli on X — transition announcement thread
• Introducing Google Antigravity CLI — antigravity.google
• Introducing Google Antigravity 2.0 — antigravity.google
• Antigravity CLI Overview — official docs
• Migrating from Gemini CLI — official docs
• google-antigravity/antigravity-cli — GitHub repository