Google Antigravity is an agent-first IDE. Is that the same as an AI dev team?
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Google Antigravity is an agent-first IDE. Is that the same as an AI dev team?

Google's Antigravity puts agents in your editor on Google's quotas. JackHamr runs a team of specialist agents on their own machines. Here is where each shape wins.

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Google Antigravity came out of Google's Gemini push with a clear pitch: an agent-first IDE. Agents plan, write, and verify work inside your editor, you supervise them from an Agent Manager, and the whole thing rides your Google AI plan. It is a genuinely good product, and it is now on every "best AI coding tools" list next to Claude Code, Cursor, and Codex.

But "agent-first IDE" and "AI dev team" are different shapes, and the difference matters more as your ambitions grow. We just published a full [JackHamr vs Google Antigravity comparison](/compare/antigravity). Here is the short version.

What Antigravity is

An editor with agents at its core. You work in the IDE, agents handle tasks under a permissions and sandbox model, and artifacts (implementation plans, walkthroughs, screenshots) are how you review what they did. It runs Gemini models, with third-party model access on the Ultra plan. Pricing is quota-based: a free tier with a weekly quota, then Google AI Pro at $19.99/mo or Ultra at $199.99/mo, with purchased credits for overage. There is no bring-your-own-key today.

For a developer who wants agents where they already code, this is a strong deal. The free tier alone covers a meaningful amount of weekly work.

What an AI dev team is

JackHamr is not an editor. It is a team of named specialist agents: a spec agent writes the plan, developer agents build, a QA agent tests every change in a real browser, and a review agent checks the result before you see a pull request. Each agent gets its own persistent cloud machine, up to 16 cores and 64 GB of RAM, and the machine keeps its files, databases, and running apps between tasks. Work is dispatched from a kanban board, and approval gates queue the decisions that need you.

The model freedom is the quiet difference: bring your own OpenAI or Anthropic keys, or plug a Claude Code or Codex subscription in as an agent's brain. You pay for infrastructure at cost while agents run, itemized, with no seats and no weekly windows.

The three differences that decide it

**Where the work runs.** Antigravity agents work on your machine, in your editor session. JackHamr agents work on their own machines, which keep running and keep their state whether you are at the keyboard or not. An agent that tests against a real running app needs somewhere to run that app.

**How much you can run at once.** Antigravity's quotas are per person and refresh on a schedule. JackHamr fans work out across as many agents as you need from a board, and each one has a full machine behind it. Ten tasks in, ten agents out.

**Who owns the models.** Antigravity runs Gemini, period (plus third-party models on Ultra). JackHamr is model-agnostic by design. If your best agent brain is Claude and your cheapest is Gemini, you can use both without changing platforms.

Where Antigravity is the better pick

Being fair matters. If you want agents where you already code, on Google's free or mid-tier plans, with browser verification and artifacts for review, Antigravity is excellent and you should use it. If your team standardizes on Gemini and Google Cloud, it is the natural choice. Not every job needs a fleet; plenty of work is a single supervised task in an editor.

When a team is the better shape

The pattern we see in production: the work that outgrows an editor is everything around the code. Specs that gate the build. QA that runs in a real browser instead of reading its own code and nodding. Review that is a separate agent, not the author grading its own homework. Recurring jobs in research, marketing, or ops that run on a schedule and check in when they need a decision.

That is team work, and it is what we built JackHamr for.

Try both

They are not enemies. Keep Antigravity in your editor for hands-on, supervised work. Hand the longer jobs to [JackHamr](/pricing): a feature that should go through spec, build, QA, and review with your approval in between, or recurring work that should keep running while you do something else.

The full row-by-row table, including pricing and model details verified from Google's documentation: [JackHamr vs Google Antigravity](/compare/antigravity). If you are weighing editors specifically, see [JackHamr vs Cursor](/compare/cursor) and [JackHamr vs Windsurf (Devin Desktop)](/compare/windsurf).

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