"Free? That can't be as good as Claude Code..." That was my first thought when I heard about the Gemini CLI back in 2025. Google had just released their AI terminal as open source.
That story has since come to an end. Google shut down the Gemini CLI on June 18, 2026 and replaced it with the Antigravity CLI: a new terminal tool with the command agy that belongs to the Antigravity platform. New commands, new models, new limits. And yes: a few bitter pills to swallow, too.
In this article, I'll show you all Antigravity CLI commands, from installation to slash commands to MCP integration. Plus an honest look at what changed compared to the Gemini CLI and when switching makes sense.
- The Antigravity CLI (command: agy) is Google's successor to the Gemini CLI, which was shut down on June 18, 2026
- /plan, /goal, /model, and shell mode via ! are the most important commands for your daily workflow
- Besides Gemini 3.5 Flash and 3.1 Pro, you can also pick Claude Sonnet 4.6 and Opus 4.6 as models
- The free tier is much smaller than before: about 20 agent requests per day instead of 1,000 (as of July 2026)
From Gemini CLI to Antigravity CLI: What Happened?
Quick context in case you're coming from my old Gemini CLI guide (you're in the right place, this is the same article in new clothes):
At I/O 2026, Google introduced Antigravity 2.0 and announced that the entire terminal experience would move there. One month later, on June 18, 2026, it was over: the Gemini CLI and the Gemini Code Assist extensions stopped serving consumer requests.
The problem is: this wasn't just a rename. The Gemini CLI was an open-source project with over 105,000 GitHub stars. The Antigravity CLI is a closed-source Go binary. And the generous free tier of 1,000 requests per day shrank to about 20 agent requests per day (as of July 2026). The community was understandably angry, and I get it.
The good news:
Technically, the Antigravity CLI is a real step forward. Subagents that work in parallel, background tasks, hooks, a planning mode, and free model choice including Claude models. Yes, you read that right: you can work with Claude Opus inside Google's own terminal tool.
Installing the Antigravity CLI
Installation no longer runs through npm but through an install script from Google:
# macOS and Linux
curl -fsSL https://antigravity.google/cli/install.sh | bash
# Windows (PowerShell)
irm https://antigravity.google/cli/install.ps1 | iex
# Afterwards: verify the installation
agy --versionAuthentication
The first time you run agy, your browser opens for login. You have two options: a regular Google account (OAuth) or a Google Cloud project for enterprise setups.
~/.gemini/antigravity-cli/settings.json, by the way. Google kept the old Gemini CLI configuration directory, a little quirk of the migration.Basic Commands: The Daily Workflow
Getting started is simple: type agy and go. For scripts and quick questions, there's the non-interactive mode:
# Interactive mode in the current directory
agy
# Quick question without a session
agy -p "Explain the architecture of this codebase"
# Start with a specific model
agy --model "Gemini 3.1 Pro (High)"
# Auto-approve all tool calls (careful!)
agy --dangerously-skip-permissions--dangerously-skip-permissions flag runs all tool calls without asking. The name says it all. Only use this in projects where nothing can break!By default, the CLI asks before every action. You can fine-tune this in the settings with four permission modes: request-review (default), proceed-in-sandbox, always-proceed, and strict.
All Slash Commands in Detail
Here's the complete list of slash commands I was able to verify. The most exciting ones first: /plan, /goal, and /grill-me didn't exist in the Gemini CLI.
/help/help/model/plan/plan Refactor the login page/goal/goal All tests pass/grill-me/btw/btw What does this function do?/diff/context/agents/tasksCtrl+b/artifacts/mcp/mcp/hooks/config/settings/keybindings/quitCtrl+D twice/grill-me is underrated! The AI asks you detailed interview-style questions before implementing anything. It feels like extra work at first, but it saves you massive correction loops afterwards.Shell Mode and Background Tasks
With the exclamation mark, you switch into shell mode and run regular terminal commands without leaving the session:
# Toggle shell mode (and back with !)
! git status
# Send a running task to the background: Ctrl+b
# Then monitor its progress:
/tasks
# Display active agents:
/agentsThe combination of Ctrl+b and /tasks is one of the biggest improvements over the Gemini CLI: you can let a long task keep running and kick off the next one in parallel.
!! git statusCtrl+b/tasksCtrl+D/quitCLI Flags
The Antigravity CLI is more spartan with flags than its predecessor. These are the most important documented options:
agyagy-pagy -p "Explain the architecture of this codebase"--modelagy --model "Gemini 3.1 Pro (High)"--dangerously-skip-permissions--versionagy --versionModel Selection: Gemini, Claude, and GPT-OSS
With /model, you pick the model for your task. And this is where it gets interesting, because Google doesn't limit you to its own models:
MCP Integration
Model Context Protocol (MCP) works in the Antigravity CLI too, but the configuration has moved compared to the Gemini CLI. There are two levels: global for all projects and local per workspace:
// Global: ~/.gemini/antigravity-cli/mcp_config.json
// Per project: .agents/mcp_config.json
{
"mcpServers": {
"myServer": {
"serverURL": "https://my-mcp-server.example.com"
}
}
}Then use /mcp to check whether your servers are connected. The output shows you which tools they provide.
Subagents, Skills, and Hooks
Under the hood, the Antigravity CLI is a multi-agent system. Three building blocks are worth knowing:
Subagents work asynchronously and in parallel without blocking your main session. Keep track of them with /agents. Skills are markdown-based blueprints for teaching the CLI recurring workflows, a concept similar to Claude Code. And hooks are interceptors that run automatically before or after certain actions; use /hooks to see which ones are active.
Limits and Pricing
Now for the unpleasant part. The Antigravity CLI is officially free during the public preview, but the quotas are rough (as of July 2026):
The free tier only includes about 20 agent requests per day, with Gemini Flash quotas refreshing every 5 hours. For comparison: the Gemini CLI offered 1,000 requests per day. You get more quota with Google AI Pro ($20/month), AI Ultra ($100/month, roughly 5x the Pro quota), and AI Ultra Max ($200/month, roughly 20x Pro). Once your quota runs out, you can buy credits ($0.01 per credit, or $199 for a bundle of 20,000).
/context.





