Google Antigravity vs. VS Code: Is It Time to Switch? (2025 Review)

For the better part of a decade, Visual Studio Code (VS Code) has been the undisputed monarch of the developer world. It is lightweight, infinitely extensible, and free. It killed Atom, it marginalized Sublime Text, and it became the default home for millions of developers.

But on November 18, 2025, Google unveiled a challenger that doesn't just want to compete with VS Code—it wants to make it obsolete.

Enter Google Antigravity, an “Agent-First” development platform powered by the massive Gemini 3 Pro model. It promises a future where you don't just write code; you manage a team of AI agents who write it for you.

But is it actually better? Is it stable enough for production work? And most importantly, is it time for you to switch? In this comprehensive review, we break down the differences, the features, and the verdict.

The Core Philosophy: Pilot vs. Mission Control

To understand the difference between these two tools, you have to understand their fundamental philosophies.

VS Code: The “Pilot” Model

VS Code, even with GitHub Copilot installed, is built around the idea that you are the pilot. You are sitting in the cockpit, hands on the controls (keyboard). The AI is your co-pilot—it offers suggestions, autocompletes lines, and answers questions in a chat window. But ultimately, you are doing the work. You open the files. You run the terminal commands. You commit the changes.

Google Antigravity: The “Mission Control” Model

Antigravity flips the script. It treats you as Mission Control. You are not necessarily the one flying the plane; you are the one directing the fleet.
Antigravity introduces the concept of Autonomous Agents. You give an agent a high-level goal—”Refactor the login component to use OAuth”—and the agent goes off and does it. It plans the steps, it edits the files, it runs the tests, and it reports back to you with a “Mission Report” (Artifact).

Feature Showdown: A Deep Dive

Let's look at how they stack up across key categories.

1. AI Integration & Intelligence

* VS Code: Relies on extensions. You can install GitHub Copilot, Supermaven, or Codeium. While powerful, these are “bolted on” to the editor. They often lack full context of your entire repository or the ability to run terminal commands autonomously.
Antigravity: AI is native to the core. It uses Gemini 3 Pro, Google's most advanced model with a massive context window. This allows Antigravity to “hold” your entire codebase, documentation, and even external libraries in its head at once. It doesn't just guess; it knows*.

2. The “Mission Control” Interface

Antigravity introduces a dedicated view called Mission Control. Here, you can see all your active agents. You might have one agent debugging a Python script, another refactoring CSS, and a third writing documentation. You can pause them, inspect their work, or give them new instructions. VS Code simply has no equivalent to this parallel processing capability.

3. Integrated Browser & Self-Healing

This is Antigravity's “killer feature.” It comes with a built-in, headless browser that the agents can control.
* Scenario: You ask the agent to “Change the button color to blue.”
* The Agent: Edits the CSS. Opens the internal browser. Navigates to the page. “Looks” at the button (using computer vision). Confirms it is blue. If it's not, it fixes its own code and tries again.
* VS Code: You have to manually switch to Chrome, refresh, check, and go back to the code.

4. Transparency & Artifacts

One of the biggest fears with AI is that it will mess up your code without you knowing. Antigravity solves this with Artifacts. Before applying changes, the agent presents a structured plan: “I will modify `auth.js`, delete `login.css`, and update `package.json`.” You can review this plan, diff the changes, and approve or reject them. It brings a level of trust that is often missing in standard Copilot workflows.

The Migration Friction: Is It Worth It?

Switching IDEs is painful. You have your keybindings, your themes, your muscle memory.
* Good News: Antigravity is actually a fork of VS Code under the hood. This means it supports most VS Code extensions and keybindings out of the box. The transition feels surprisingly familiar.
* Bad News: It is still in Public Preview. It can be buggy. Sometimes agents get stuck in loops. Sometimes Gemini 3 Pro hallucinates. It is not yet as rock-solid stable as VS Code.

The Verdict: Who Should Switch?

Stick with VS Code if:

* You work in a highly regulated environment where sending code to Google's cloud is a security violation.
* You prefer total control and enjoy the act of typing code manually.
* You rely on obscure extensions that might not be fully compatible yet.

Switch to Google Antigravity if:

* You are an “Early Adopter” who loves trying the bleeding edge.
* You want to move from “coding” to “architecting.”
* You are tired of repetitive tasks like refactoring, writing tests, and updating documentation.
* You want to experience the power of Agentic Development before it becomes the industry standard.

Conclusion

Google Antigravity is not just a VS Code clone; it is a glimpse into the future of software engineering. It suggests a world where the barrier to building software is drastically lower, and the speed of innovation is drastically higher.

At BYS Marketing, we believe in using the best tools to deliver the best results. We are actively testing Antigravity in our R&D labs to see how it can accelerate our client projects. Whether it's building complex web applications or automating digital workflows, we stay on the cutting edge so you don't have to.

—

Ready to upgrade your digital strategy?
Contact BYS Marketing today. We build the future, one agent at a time.