Google Antigravity vs Cursor: Side Projects Yes, Production No

Short answer: Google Antigravity is a VS Code fork built around an Agent Manager that runs several coding agents at once. Reach for it over Cursor on boilerplate, scaffolding and side projects, where parallel agents pay off and you can live with less control. Stay on Cursor for production code and careful refactors. Long sessions still eat RAM, and niche extensions and themes may not make the trip.

Update (April 2026). Five months on, the take shifted a bit. The day-one crashes are mostly gone, parallel agents earn their keep on boilerplate-heavy work, but the RAM creep on long sessions is still real. Verdict moved from “give it a shot on side projects” to “keep it on a second machine for the kind of work that benefits from agents working in parallel”. Added a comparison table against Cursor / Windsurf / Copilot and an FAQ at the bottom for the questions people kept emailing me.

Why I Even Tried This (Because Twitter Made Me Do It)

Look, I wasn’t planning to switch IDEs. I’m comfortable with VS Code. My setup works. My extensions work. Life is good.

But then Twitter happened. Some guy posting screenshots all day long. “Antigravity is insane.” “This kills Cursor.” “Agent-first is the future.”

Classic hype cycle. But I had a free Saturday and a side project I didn’t care about breaking, so… let’s see what the fuss is about.

Downloaded the preview. Opened it.

First thought: This isn’t an IDE. This is a spaceship cockpit.

No friendly chat sidebar like Cursor. Instead you get this “Agent Manager” panel with permissions, toggles, warnings, and policies everywhere.

Either this is genius, or it’s going to be a beautiful disaster.

Day 1: Installation Was Fine, But Then…

Installation on macOS was actually smooth. Download, drag to Applications, done.

But here’s the first surprise: it looks like VS Code because it is a VS Code fork (Google shipped it on November 18, 2025, the same day as Gemini 3). Then you realize how heavily they reworked it. People online keep insisting it actually reuses Windsurf internals (there are Cascade references floating around, and Google did hire the Windsurf team), but Google has not confirmed that, so treat the Windsurf angle as a rumor, not a fact.

Which means: not all your VS Code extensions work.

I spent a good while trying to figure out why my favorite theme wasn’t loading. Turns out, it’s just not compatible. Most popular extensions are there (Prettier, ESLint, GitLens), but if you have niche ones… tough luck.

Minor annoyance, but annoying nonetheless.

Then comes the setup wizard:

• Choose your model (Claude? GPT? Gemini?)
• Configure agent permissions (can they run commands automatically or ask first?)
• Set execution policies

I’m setting up an IDE, not deploying to production. Felt heavy.

I just clicked “recommended defaults” and hoped I wasn’t about to nuke my project.

Day 2: When Agents Do Things Without Asking

Simple test: “Create an auth endpoint with JWT and refresh tokens.”

Hit enter. Went to make coffee.

Came back.

The endpoint code was there. Great.

But there’s another agent running. I look. It’s writing unit tests.

I didn’t ask for unit tests.

At first I thought: “Did I mistype? Did I accidentally trigger something?”

Nope. The agents just… act. Independently. In parallel.

One agent writes the endpoint. Another agent sees the new code and thinks “hey, this needs tests” and starts writing them. Without asking.

Is this cool? Yeah, kinda.

Is this unsettling? Also yeah.

Because now you’re sitting there thinking: What else are they doing when I’m not looking?

(Honest question: does anyone else get this weird feeling like someone’s watching over your shoulder while these agents work? Like a reviewer breathing down your neck but in software form. Uncomfortable but useful.)

Artifacts: Good Idea, Execution Needs Work

Antigravity has this “Artifacts” feature where each agent leaves behind a record of what it did:

• Code diffs
• Screenshots
• Browser session recordings
• Reasoning logs

Sounds great on paper.

In reality? When you have several agents running at once, the Artifacts panel becomes a mess. Overlapping logs, diffs everywhere, screenshots from different tasks piling up.

I ended up just checking the final code and hoping nothing broke silently in the background.

The “audit trail” quickly becomes “audit noise.”

When the Browser Opened Itself (And Then Exploded)

This was the moment I went: okay, this IS next-level.

I asked an agent to fix a UI bug.

What happened next:

1. Agent edited the component
2. Restarted the dev server
3. Opened a headless browser
4. Clicked through the UI
5. Verified the bug was gone
6. Committed the fix

I did nothing. Just watched.

Cursor would never do this.

But then: memory leak. The browser process hung. IDE froze. RAM spiked. Had to force-quit.

Happened more than once.

So yeah, autonomous agents are cool until they eat all your RAM and crash your machine.

The “Am I Being Paranoid?” Moment

There’s something inherently weird about handing control to agents.

You’re working on one part of the codebase. Meanwhile, agents are refactoring another file, writing tests for a third, and opening browsers to validate a fourth.

All. At. The. Same. Time.

For small, experimental projects? Maybe fine.

For production code or anything with sensitive data? I’m not comfortable yet.

I keep thinking: What if one of these agents decides to refactor my entire API layer in the middle of the night?

(Probably won’t happen. But the anxiety is real.)

Cursor vs Antigravity vs Windsurf vs Copilot (The Honest Take)

Cursor feels like pair programming with someone senior. They suggest, you decide, nothing happens unless you say so.

Antigravity is more like hiring that one intern who ships faster than everyone else but also refactors your entire folder structure in the middle of the night because “it made more sense this way.” You love the output. You hate the surprises.

Here’s how the four AI-IDEs I actually use stack up after extended trials:

The short version: pick by how much autonomy you can stomach. Antigravity gives the most, Copilot the least, Cursor and Windsurf land in between with different defaults.

Do I Recommend It? Honestly, I Don’t Know Yet

Ask me again in a month.

Right now I’m mostly impressed (the parallel agents thing IS cool), fairly frustrated (missing extensions, memory leaks, too much noise), and a little paranoid (what are these agents doing when I’m not watching?).

If you’re writing a lot of CRUD endpoints, forms, and boilerplate APIs, and you have a side project you genuinely don’t care about breaking, yeah, give it a shot. You’ll probably have fun.

If you’re working on anything production-critical, or you’re the kind of person who gets anxious when tools do things without asking, stay away for now. Seriously. This thing will stress you out.

I’m keeping it installed. On a separate machine. Just in case.

That probably tells you everything you need to know.

Who Should Actually Use This?

After five months of on-and-off use, here is the honest split:

Try Antigravity if you:

• Spin up a lot of CRUD APIs, internal tools, prototypes, or boilerplate-heavy features.
• Have a side project where shipped matters more than supervised.
• Want to see what a multi-agent IDE feels like before the rest of the industry catches up.
• Already keep your work machine and your experiments machine separate.

Skip it (for now) if you:

• Work in regulated codebases or anything with sensitive data: the autonomy is real and the audit trail is still messy.
• Rely on a deep VS Code extension setup that includes anything niche.
• Are easily stressed by tools doing things without asking. This thing will stress you out.
• Run a low-RAM laptop. The leaks I hit aren’t theoretical.

Worth checking back later if you:

• Liked the idea but waited for stability.
• Use Cursor today and want a clean side-by-side once Antigravity exits preview.

Sources

For the claims I couldn’t verify first-hand (the VS Code fork, the model roster, the pricing), here is what I leaned on:

• Build with Google Antigravity, our new agentic development platform (Google Developers Blog) for the November 18, 2025 launch, the agent-first design, and model optionality across Gemini 3 Pro, Claude, and OpenAI’s GPT-OSS.
• Google Antigravity (Wikipedia) for the “fork of VS Code” framing and the note that Google has not publicly confirmed the exact technical relationship.
• Google Antigravity models (official docs) for the current model list: Gemini 3 Pro/Flash, Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Opus 4.6, GPT-OSS-120B.
• Windsurf Pricing in 2026 (CloudZero) for the Windsurf Pro move from $15 to $20/month in March 2026.

Related reading: agents that act on their own is exactly where the whole field is heading. The bigger picture is in Stop Prompting Your Agent. Start Writing Loops.

P.S. If you’ve tried Antigravity, let me know: Did you hit the same memory issues? Did agents refactor stuff without asking? Am I being paranoid or is this actually a thing? Hit me up on LinkedIn.