Grab a coffee, sit down, and let’s talk. No, seriously—put the mechanical keyboard away for a second.
If you’ve been online in the last 48 hours, you’ve probably felt a disturbance in the Force. Or at least, a disturbance in the r/programming subreddit. Google just dropped Antigravity, their new AI-first “agentic” IDE, alongside the absolute behemoth that is Gemini 3.
And the internet? The internet is losing its mind.
Depending on who you listen to, this is either the greatest productivity boost since caffeine or the bell tolling for entry-level software engineering jobs. So, as your fellow code-wrangling enthusiast who is equally excited and terrified, let’s unpack this. Is this actually the “Junior Dev Killer” everyone is whispering about, or just another shiny toy that’s going to hallucinate a package.json file that doesn’t exist?
Let’s dive in.
First Off: What in the World is Antigravity?
Okay, let’s cut through the marketing fluff. You know Cursor? You know Windsurf? Imagine if Google looked at those tools, said “Hold my beer,” and decided to build an entire platform dedicated not just to helping you code, but to doing the coding for you.
Google Antigravity is, at its core, a fork of VS Code (because of course it is). But calling it a code editor is like calling a Ferrari a “transportation device.” It’s an Agentic Development Platform.
The “Agent” Difference
Here is the distinction that matters:
- Copilot (The Old Way): You type
function, it suggestscalculateTotal. It’s fancy autocomplete. - Antigravity (The New Way): You type “Build me a React app that tracks my coffee intake and visualizes the jitters with a 3D chart,” and an agent goes off and does it.
It plans. It writes code. It opens a terminal. It runs the code. It opens a browser inside the IDE to test if the button actually clicks. If it errors out? It reads the error, fixes the code, and tries again.
It’s not just “vibe coding” (though Google actually used that term, which makes me feel 100 years old); it’s autonomous development. It’s like having a little digital intern living in your laptop, chugging virtual Red Bull and trying their best to impress you.
The Feature That’s freaking Everyone Out: “Artifacts”
If you want to know why people are screaming “JOB LOSS,” look no further than the Artifacts feature.
In the past, when you gave an AI a complex task, you got a wall of text or a code block. Antigravity changes the game. It gives you deliverables.
- Task Lists: It creates a checklist of what it’s going to do.
- Implementation Plans: It writes out its strategy before writing a single line of code.
- Walkthroughs: This is the kicker. When it’s done, it presents you with a “Walkthrough”—a document with screenshots and recordings of the agent testing its own work.
Does that sound familiar? That is literally a Pull Request description. That is the status update you expect from a Junior Developer during the morning stand-up.
“Hey boss, I planned out the API, implemented the endpoints, tested it (here are the screenshots), and now it’s ready for review.”
Antigravity basically automates the administrative overhead of being a programmer. It’s no longer just spitting out code; it’s showing its work. And that “show your work” element is what bridges the gap between a “tool” and a “coworker.”
The “Junior Developer” Comparison: Too Close for Comfort?
Let’s address the elephant in the server room. The headline says “raises job loss fear,” and it’s not clickbait. The comparison to a Junior Developer is startlingly accurate, but maybe not for the reasons you think.
1. It Needs Supervision (Just Like a Junior)
Right now, Antigravity is impressive, but it’s also… well, it’s an intern. I’ve seen reports of users asking it to port a Unity project, and after two hours of “hard work,” the agent produced a malfunctioning menu and a lot of apologies. It tries hard. It hallucinates. It gets stuck in loops.
It requires a Senior Developer (that’s you) to look at the “Artifact,” sigh, and say, “Okay, good effort, but why did you import a library that hasn’t been updated since 2018?”
2. It Automates the “Grunt Work”
Junior devs often cut their teeth on the boring stuff: writing boilerplate, setting up testing frameworks, updating dependencies, centering divs. Antigravity eats this work for breakfast. If you are a Junior Developer whose entire value proposition is “I can write boilerplate React components slowly,” then yes, be afraid. Be very afraid.
But if your value is “I can figure out why we are building this feature and how it connects to the user database,” you’re safe. For now.
Wait, Who is Jules?
Just to make things more confusing, Google also launched Jules. Think of Antigravity as your office (the IDE) where you work with the AI. Think of Jules as the remote freelancer you hired to handle the backlog.
Jules is an asynchronous agent that lives on GitHub. You assign it an issue—like “Fix this bug in the checkout flow” or “Update these 15 dependencies”—and Jules goes offline, creates a branch, writes the code, tests it, and opens a Pull Request.
You don’t watch Jules work. You just get the email notification: “Jules has opened a PR.”
This is actually the more disruptive tool. Antigravity makes you faster. Jules works while you are sleeping. If Antigravity is the exoskeleton suit, Jules is the robot army.
The “Fear” Factor: Is the Sky Falling?
I trawled through the Reddit threads so you don’t have to (you’re welcome). The sentiment is a mix of pure awe and existential dread.
“It feels like a mix between Cursor and Kiro… it works great.” — Random Redditor
“I think a beginner might get lost in here. A beginner should avoid AI until they know enough about development to guide AI.” — Another Wise Redditor
The fear stems from the Bar for Entry. In 2015, if you could write a for loop and center a button, you were hired. In 2025, Antigravity does that in 4 seconds.
The fear isn’t that programming is dying. The fear is that the “training wheels” phase of a career is disappearing. If the AI does the junior work, how does a junior ever become a senior? It’s the “Chicken and Egg” problem, but the Chicken is a robot and the Egg is a subscription service.
The Reality Check (And Some Sarcasm)
Before we all go learn to farm (though, honestly, “Smart Farming” is probably huge right now), let’s look at the glitches.
Antigravity is buggy. Like, “crash your browser” buggy. Users are hitting rate limits faster than I hit the “Snooze” button. The “Deep Think” mode in Gemini 3 is powerful, but it’s slow. Sometimes, the agent will confidently show you a screenshot of a “working app” that is actually just a white screen because it forgot to link the CSS file.
It behaves exactly like a nervous Junior Developer who lied on their resume. “Did you test this?” “Yes.” (AI sweating profusely) “Then why is the console full of red text?”
This tool isn’t replacing humans yet. It’s replacing the boring parts of being a human. It’s a force multiplier. A single senior dev using Antigravity and Jules can probably output the work of three unassisted devs. That doesn’t mean we fire the other two; it (hopefully) means we build three times as much cool stuff.
Why You Should actually Be Excited
Look, I get the anxiety. But imagine this: You have an idea for an app. usually, the friction between “Idea” and “App” is about 40 hours of setting up environments, configuring Webpack (why is it always Webpack?), and writing boilerplate.
With Antigravity, you open the “Manager View” (Mission Control). You tell the agent: “I want a Python backend, a React frontend, and a PostgreSQL database. Set it up.” You go get a coffee. You come back. It’s done. Now, you—the human—get to do the fun part. You get to design the logic, the user experience, the complex algorithms.
The tool raises the floor, not the ceiling.
The Verdict
Google Antigravity is a shot across the bow of the entire software industry. It’s Google saying, “We aren’t losing the AI war to OpenAI or Anthropic.”
Does it function like a Junior Developer? Yes. Does it raise job loss fears? Absolutely.
But here is the truth: The developers who lose their jobs will be the ones who refuse to use these tools. The developers who keep their jobs—and get massive raises—will be the ones who know how to manage these agents.
You are no longer just a code-writer. You are now an AI Manager. You are the Architect. Antigravity is just your construction crew.
So, download it. Play with it. Laugh when it hallucinates. But don’t ignore it. Because the “Junior Dev” living inside your computer is getting smarter every day, and you want to be the one giving it orders, not the other way around.
