Antigravity CLI vs Gemini CLI: What Changed and How to Migrate

Gemini CLI did not get an update or a rebrand — it got a shutdown notice. Google confirmed that on June 18, 2026, Gemini CLI and the Gemini Code Assist IDE extensions stopped serving free individual users and Google AI Pro/Ultra subscribers, with Antigravity CLI (launched May 19, 2026 and invoked with the agy command) taking over as the terminal agent Google wants developers to use going forward. If you have been running gemini in your terminal and it is throttled, erroring out, or just gone, this is why — and this guide walks through exactly what changed, who still keeps Gemini CLI access, and how to move your config, skills and MCP servers over.

What actually changed, in one paragraph

Google is consolidating its developer agent products around a single harness. Antigravity CLI, according to Google's own announcement, "took inspiration from core Gemini CLI product and harness components," and both it and the Antigravity 2.0 desktop app now share that harness and much of their settings. Gemini CLI itself is not disappearing entirely — it is being narrowed to enterprise and legacy-key customers, while everyone else is pushed to Antigravity CLI. Google frames this as unification rather than a straight kill-and-replace, but for the average solo developer or free-tier user, the practical effect is the same: the tool you type gemini into no longer works, and agy is what you type instead.

The retirement timeline, exactly as Google stated it

Google's developer blog laid out the cutoff in specific terms, not a vague "sometime this year":

• May 19, 2026: Antigravity CLI becomes available to everyone, alongside the Antigravity 2.0 desktop app, at Google I/O 2026.
• June 18, 2026: Gemini CLI and the Gemini Code Assist IDE extensions stop serving requests from Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers, and from free Gemini Code Assist for individuals users.
• June 18, 2026 onward (GitHub): No new installations of Gemini Code Assist for GitHub on GitHub organizations; existing requests from already-installed orgs continue briefly before also stopping in the following weeks.

Google's own repository for Gemini CLI echoes the same date and reframes the tool's remaining audience: it is now positioned for organizations on Gemini Code Assist Standard or Enterprise, or Code Assist for GitHub through Google Cloud, plus developers using legacy paid API or Vertex AI keys. The repo also notes that Gemini CLI's harness was never tuned for Gemini 4-series models or later — another signal that active development attention has moved to Antigravity.

Who is actually affected

Not every Gemini CLI user lost access on the same day. It splits cleanly into two groups.

Cut off on June 18, 2026: anyone using Gemini CLI for free through Gemini Code Assist for individuals, and Google AI Pro or Ultra subscribers who were using their consumer subscription to power the CLI.

Keeps access: customers on Gemini Code Assist Standard or Enterprise licenses, teams using Code Assist for GitHub through Google Cloud billing, and anyone authenticating with a paid Gemini API key or a Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform API key. If your Gemini CLI install is tied to a Google Cloud org or an invoiced enterprise contract, nothing changed for you on June 18 — this migration is aimed at individual and free-tier usage.

What Antigravity CLI actually is

Antigravity CLI is described by Google as "the most lightweight way to invoke, monitor, and interact with Antigravity agents" — the terminal counterpart to the Antigravity 2.0 desktop app, which adds a graphical Agent Manager, a built-in browser and native debugging on top of the same underlying agent harness. The CLI deliberately does not try to be a GUI: it is built in Go rather than Gemini CLI's Node.js/npm stack, which Google says makes it faster and lighter to run, and it is closed-source, unlike Gemini CLI's Apache 2.0 open-source repository.

Feature parity with Gemini CLI was not complete at launch. Google explicitly carried over Agent Skills, Hooks, Subagents, and Extensions — the last of which is now branded "Antigravity plugins." The headline new capability is asynchronous, background multi-agent orchestration: Antigravity CLI can hand off work like a large-scale refactor or researching several topics in parallel to background subagents without blocking your terminal session, which it frames as a step beyond Gemini CLI's more linear, single-session model.

Antigravity CLI vs Gemini CLI: feature by feature

Pricing: what Antigravity CLI costs now

Google's pricing page lists four tiers that apply across Antigravity, including the CLI:

• Individuals — $0/month: access to a set of agent models, unlimited Tab completions and Command requests, with basic weekly rate limits.
• Google AI Pro: adds higher rate limits and a flexible AI credit pool on top of the free tier (priced as part of the broader Google AI Pro subscription).
• Google AI Ultra: aimed at developers making Antigravity their main tool, with access to the latest Gemini models, higher limits again and a larger credit pool.
• Business (via Google Cloud): consumption-based or through Gemini Enterprise plans; Standard/Plus seat plans start at $30 per seat per month, with a pay-as-you-go option that has no seat fee, plus spend caps and centralized admin controls.

In short: there is still a genuinely free way to run Antigravity CLI, which softens the blow for anyone who relied on free Gemini CLI access. If you need the newest Gemini 4 Argon model specifically, Google's model page notes that it requires a paid Google AI Pro plan or an eligible trial.

How to migrate, step by step

This is not an automatic, invisible cutover — you have to run through onboarding and move a few files by hand. Based on Google's migration documentation, here is the practical sequence:

1. Install Antigravity CLI. On macOS, Linux (and Googlebook), run the shell installer; on Windows, use the PowerShell or CMD installer linked from Google's download page. The binary installs to ~/.local/bin/agy on Unix-like systems or an AppData\Local\agy\bin folder on Windows.
2. Launch agy for the first time. If it detects an existing Gemini CLI profile, it shows an onboarding checklist offering to convert extensions and global configs, migrate active session tokens into your OS's native keyring, and align default visual settings. You choose which pieces to migrate — it is not all-or-nothing.
3. Import extensions manually if needed. Run agy plugin import gemini to have Antigravity CLI search your legacy local directories, parse your old extension manifests, and convert them into native layout blocks (Google's own example output cites things like "4 legacy commands converted to skills").
4. Move your workspace skills folder. Project-level skills do not migrate automatically: you need to manually rename or relocate .gemini/skills/ to .agents/skills/ in each repository.
5. Re-point your MCP server configuration. Gemini CLI kept MCP servers inline inside ~/.gemini/settings.json. Antigravity CLI expects standalone files instead: globally at ~/.gemini/config/mcp_config.json, or per workspace at .agents/mcp_config.json. For remote servers, replace the old url or httpUrl key with serverUrl.
6. Leave your context files alone. Both workspace GEMINI.md and AGENTS.md files keep working without edits, and global skills can stay at ~/.gemini/skills/ or move to ~/.gemini/antigravity-cli/skills/ — either path is still read.
7. Check for anything that just does not carry over. Google warns that customized terminal themes or experimental visual overlays from Gemini CLI might not be supported in Antigravity CLI, so expect to redo cosmetic preferences.

The MCP config change, in detail

Because it trips people up, the MCP migration deserves its own example. A legacy Gemini CLI entry for a remote MCP server looked like a url or httpUrl field inside settings.json. In Antigravity CLI's standalone mcp_config.json, that same server is defined with a serverUrl key instead:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "remote-indexer": {
            "serverUrl": "https://mcp.internal.enterprise.com/sse",
            "env": {
                "AUTH_TOKEN": "secure_alpha_token"
            }
        }
    }
}

If you copy an old config file over as-is without renaming that key, the server will silently fail to connect rather than throwing an obvious error, so it is worth double-checking each MCP entry after migration rather than assuming a straight copy-paste will work.

Migration gotchas to watch for

• Workspace skills need a manual move. Global skills have a graceful fallback path, but per-project .gemini/skills/ folders do not automatically appear in Antigravity CLI until you relocate them to .agents/skills/.
• Not every GitHub org migrates the same way. New installs of Gemini Code Assist for GitHub stopped on June 18, 2026, but orgs that already had it installed kept limited service for a few more weeks before it wound down — plan your org's cutover rather than assuming a hard same-day stop.
• Model availability keeps shifting. As of November 2026, Antigravity's model picker includes both Claude 4.6 models and GPT-OSS 120B, but Google has already scheduled both for removal on November 18, 2026 — worth checking the current model list before you standardize a workflow on one.
• Enterprise users may not need to do anything. If your access runs through Gemini Code Assist Standard/Enterprise or a paid API/Vertex key, Gemini CLI itself has not shut down for you — migrating is optional, not forced, at least for now.

Which one should you actually use now

This isn't a neutral "pick your favorite" comparison, because one side of it is being phased out for most users. If you are a free-tier or Google AI Pro/Ultra user who was running Gemini CLI, you no longer have a choice: Antigravity CLI (agy) is the tool you now install and learn. If you're an enterprise customer on Gemini Code Assist Standard/Enterprise, or your org bills through Google Cloud with Code Assist for GitHub, you can stay on Gemini CLI for as long as Google continues supporting that tier, but you should still expect Antigravity CLI to be where new features land first, since that's where Google is putting its harness development. For anyone starting fresh with no existing Gemini CLI setup, there's no reason to install the retired tool at all — go straight to Antigravity CLI.

It's also worth seeing how Antigravity fits into the rest of Google's coding-agent push: our existing look at how Google Antigravity's desktop agent compares to Claude Code covers the GUI side of the same platform, and our breakdown of Antigravity against Cursor on pricing and features is useful if you're evaluating editors rather than terminals. If you want the pre-retirement baseline, our earlier piece on how Gemini CLI stacked up against Claude Code is a snapshot of the tool as it existed before this transition.

What to do next

If gemini stopped working for you on or after June 18, 2026: install Antigravity CLI from Google's download page, run agy once to trigger the onboarding checklist, and let it migrate your session tokens and global config. Then manually move any per-project .gemini/skills/ folder to .agents/skills/, and rewrite any MCP server entries that used the old url/httpUrl key to use serverUrl in the new standalone mcp_config.json file. If you're on an enterprise Gemini Code Assist plan, you can migrate on your own timeline, but it's worth testing Antigravity CLI now rather than waiting, since that's where Google's active development has clearly shifted.

Written byFelix Moreau

Felix Moreau writes Pandromeda's software coverage and how-to guides. He covers Windows, macOS and Linux updates, the apps people rely on, emulators and developer tools, and turns official documentation into clear, numbered steps that work on the current version.

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