Project IDX. Firebase Studio. Google AI Studio. Antigravity. Gemini CLI. If you're confused about what Google has, what's dead, and what you should actually use — this is the article you need.
Google has a habit of building overlapping developer tools, rebranding them, merging them, and occasionally sunsetting them before most developers have heard of them. The agentic coding space is no exception.
In the span of roughly 18 months, Google went from a browser-based cloud IDE called Project IDX to a full agentic platform spanning a desktop app, a VS Code fork, a CLI, an SDK, and a managed agent service. The path from A to Z is not a straight line.
This article traces the entire family tree — what each product was, what it became, what's still alive, and most importantly, what you should actually be using in 2026.
The Family Tree at a Glance
Project IDX (2023)
└── absorbed into
Firebase Studio (April 2025)
└── sunsetting March 2027, replaced by
├── Google AI Studio (Build mode) ← for prototyping
└── Google Antigravity ← for production development
└── Antigravity CLI ← replaces Gemini CLI (retired June 2026)
1. Project IDX — Where It Started
Status: Absorbed (no longer exists as a standalone product)
Project IDX launched in 2023 as Google's answer to browser-based cloud development environments — think GitHub Codespaces or Replit, but with early Gemini integration. The pitch was simple: a full development environment accessible from any browser, with built-in support for popular frameworks (React, Angular, Vue, Flutter, Android) and AI coding assistance powered by Gemini.
It was a genuine step forward for cloud IDEs. But it was also clearly a first-generation experiment.
In April 2025, Google absorbed Project IDX into a more ambitious platform called Firebase Studio. If you were an IDX user, your existing projects were automatically migrated. The Project IDX brand disappeared.
What it offered:
- Cloud-based development environment, browser-accessible
- AI coding assistance via Gemini models
- Import from existing repos
- Support for multiple languages and frameworks
- Built-in emulation, testing, and debugging
Why it matters now: Project IDX laid the groundwork for the browser-based IDE architecture that Firebase Studio and later Google AI Studio inherited. If you used it, you'll find the DNA in its successors.
2. Firebase Studio — The Middle Chapter
Status: Sunsetting. New workspace creation disabled June 22, 2026. Full shutdown March 22, 2027.
Firebase Studio was Google's attempt to build a unified full-stack development platform — combining Project IDX's browser IDE with Firebase's backend services (Firestore, Authentication, App Hosting) and specialized AI agents powered by Gemini.
Launched at Google Cloud Next in April 2025, it was genuinely capable. You could prototype, build, test, and publish full-stack AI-infused apps — APIs, backends, frontends, mobile — entirely from your browser. It was agentic before "agentic IDE" was a mainstream category.
But it lasted less than 12 months as an active product.
On March 19, 2026 — the same day Google launched the full Firebase integration into AI Studio — Firebase Studio was officially put on a sunset timeline. New workspace creation was disabled on June 22, 2026. Existing workspaces can be used and migrated until the full shutdown on March 22, 2027.
Google's official statement framed it as simplification: "We're simplifying our AI developer offerings by transitioning the lessons learned from Firebase Studio preview into our flagship tools: Google AI Studio and Google Antigravity."
What it offered:
- Unified browser-based full-stack development environment
- Gemini-powered App Prototyping agent
- Deep Firebase integration (Firestore, Auth, App Hosting)
- Built-in testing, monitoring, and deployment
- Multimodal prompting (text, images, drawing)
Migration paths:
- If you prefer browser-based prototyping → migrate to Google AI Studio
- If you prefer a full IDE with deep code control → migrate to Google Antigravity
⚠️ If you still have active Firebase Studio workspaces, migrate before March 22, 2027. After that date, all remaining data is permanently deleted with no recovery option.
3. Google AI Studio (Build Mode) — The Prototyping Layer
Status: Active. Free tier available.
Google AI Studio existed before all this as a prompt-and-experiment platform for the Gemini API. But on March 19, 2026, it gained something transformative: a full-stack app builder powered by the Antigravity agent, with native Firebase integration baked in.
This is now the front door for beginners and prototypers. You describe an app in plain English, the Antigravity agent generates a full-stack application, and you can deploy it to Google Cloud Run in one click. No local environment. No configuration files. No SDK to install.
What makes it different from the old AI Studio:
- Antigravity agent integration — the same agent that powers the desktop IDE now powers AI Studio's Build mode
- Firebase auto-detection — when your app needs a database or user authentication, the agent detects it from your prompt and offers to provision Firestore and Firebase Auth with your approval
- One-click deploy — to Google Cloud Run, with the first two deployments free
- Native Android app building — from a single prompt, with direct Google Play Console integration (launched at Google I/O 2026)
- In-browser preview — test your app live without leaving the browser
Pricing:
| Plan | Price | What You Get |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | All models, rate-limited (quota refreshes ~every 5 hours) |
| AI Pro | $20/mo | Higher quotas, priority access |
| AI Ultra | $100/mo | ~5× Pro quotas |
| AI Ultra Max | $200/mo | ~20× Pro quotas |
| Pay-as-you-go | $25 / 2,500 credits | For occasional use |
The honest limitation: AI Studio generates primarily client-side React applications. For apps that need a real backend, server-side logic, persistent data beyond what Firebase provides, or multi-person Git-based collaboration — you need Antigravity.
Best for: Beginners, founders, designers, product managers, rapid prototypers, and anyone who wants to go from idea to working app without a local dev environment.
The workflow it enables:
Idea → Prompt in AI Studio → Firebase auto-provisioned → Cloud Run deployed →
→ Export to Antigravity when you're ready to build for real
4. Google Antigravity — The Production Layer
Status: Active. The flagship agentic development platform.
Antigravity is where the story gets genuinely exciting — and complicated.
Originally introduced in November 2025 (built on the foundation of the Windsurf team acquisition for $2.4 billion), Antigravity launched as a standalone VS Code fork. But at Google I/O 2026 on May 19, 2026, Google unveiled Antigravity 2.0 — a full rebuild that expanded it into a four-surface platform:
- Antigravity IDE — the VS Code fork desktop application
- Antigravity Desktop App — a standalone hub for orchestrating parallel agents without the IDE overhead
- Antigravity CLI — a terminal-native interface for running agents from the command line (replaces the retired Gemini CLI)
- Antigravity SDK — for building agents programmatically
The I/O 2026 demo was memorable: Director of Software Engineering Varun Mohan stood on stage and had Antigravity's parallel agents build a working operating system core from scratch for under $1,000 in token costs — then ran a live Doom clone built on top of that new OS.
What makes Antigravity different from other AI IDEs:
Unlike Cursor or Copilot, where AI is an assistant embedded in a sidebar, Antigravity inverts the model. The Agent Manager surface makes agents the primary actors — with the editor, terminal, and browser as surfaces the agents control, not surfaces you work in with AI assistance.
Every agent run produces structured Artifacts: task lists, implementation plans, browser recordings, and walkthroughs. Agents self-verify their work by running tests, taking screenshots, and comparing results against the spec before declaring a task done. You review Artifacts and leave comments — like a code review, but on agent plans rather than human-written code.
Unique features:
- Up to 5 parallel autonomous agents working across different tasks simultaneously
- Browser Subagent — agents spin up a Chromium instance, navigate your dev server, click through user flows, and capture evidence the feature works
- Scheduled background tasks — queue agent runs on a cron schedule; come back to completed work
- Multi-model support: Gemini 3 Pro (primary), Gemini Flash, Claude Sonnet 4.6, Claude Opus 4.6 (non-Gemini models require your own API key)
- MCP (Model Context Protocol) integration
- Deep Firebase and Google Cloud integration
Pricing (post-Google I/O 2026 restructure):
| Plan | Price | What You Get |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | All models, rate-limited (refreshes ~every 5 hours) |
| AI Pro | $20/mo | 1,000 credits/mo, full agent access |
| AI Ultra | $100/mo | ~5× Pro quotas (new at I/O 2026) |
| AI Ultra Max | $200/mo | ~20× Pro quotas (reduced from $249.99) |
| Pay-as-you-go | $25 / 2,500 credits | On-demand top-up |
The quota problem — be warned:
Antigravity's pricing history in 2026 has been rocky. Google made four undisclosed quota cuts in four months between launch and I/O 2026. Multiple Pro users reported 7-day and even 10-day lockouts when their monthly quota ran dry — with one developer documenting a single Claude Opus 4.6 session consuming 635 of their 1,000 monthly credits. The I/O 2026 pricing restructure looks like an acknowledgment of the problem, but there is still no published SLA on what Pro subscribers can expect to consume monthly.
Important limitations:
- VS Code fork architecture means no JetBrains support (IntelliJ, PyCharm, WebStorm users: Antigravity is a non-starter)
- Uses Open VSX only — no access to the official VS Code Marketplace
- Non-Gemini models (Claude, GPT) require your own API key
Best for: Full-stack developers building production applications, teams working on multi-file, multi-layer features, developers who want to delegate implementation work to agents and review structured plans instead of typing every line.
SWE-bench score: 76.2% with Gemini 3 Pro — top-tier performance alongside Claude Code and Cursor.
5. Antigravity CLI — The Terminal Layer
Status: Active. Replaces the retired Gemini CLI.
The legacy Gemini CLI was retired on June 18, 2026. Google asked all existing users to migrate to the Antigravity CLI — a terminal-native interface for creating and running agents without a graphical UI.
The Antigravity CLI routes through the same credit pool as the IDE. If you depended on the old Gemini CLI's generous free quotas for terminal-based agentic workflows, factor this into your cost model — the Antigravity CLI on a free plan has more restrictions than the old Gemini CLI offered.
Best for: Developers who prefer terminal-first workflows and want to run Antigravity agents without launching the full desktop IDE.
6. Firebase — The Backend That Survived Everything
Status: Fully active. Not sunsetting.
One important clarification amid all this flux: Firebase the backend platform is not going anywhere. Only Firebase Studio (the IDE wrapper) is sunsetting.
Core Firebase services — Cloud Firestore, Authentication, App Hosting, Realtime Database, Cloud Functions, Storage — continue to operate and are, if anything, more integrated than ever. Both Google AI Studio and Antigravity provision and connect to Firebase backends. Genkit middleware makes Firebase Functions production-ready for AI workloads.
Firebase is Google's agent-native backend in the I/O 2026 stack. It's not a product in transition — it's the stable foundation everything else is being built on top of.
The Official Google Workflow in 2026
Google's recommended end-to-end development flow, as demonstrated at I/O 2026:
1. PROTOTYPE in Google AI Studio
→ Describe your app in plain English
→ Firebase auto-provisions database and auth
→ Deploy to Cloud Run and validate the concept
2. BUILD in Google Antigravity
→ Export from AI Studio when the prototype is worth building properly
→ Agents handle multi-file feature work, tests, and browser verification
→ You review Artifacts and manage agent direction
3. DEPLOY on Google Cloud + Firebase
→ Cloud Run for web
→ Google Play Console for Android (direct from AI Studio or Antigravity)
→ Firebase for backend services
The sharpest summary: AI Studio to explore, Antigravity to build.
When to Use What
| Situation | Tool |
|---|---|
| You have an idea and want to see it in 20 minutes | Google AI Studio |
| You're a beginner with no local dev environment | Google AI Studio |
| You need a clickable demo for a meeting this week | Google AI Studio |
| You need persistent data or real user auth | Antigravity |
| Multiple people need to collaborate with Git | Antigravity |
| You need server-side logic, webhooks, or scheduled jobs | Antigravity |
| You prefer terminal-first workflows | Antigravity CLI |
| You're on JetBrains IDEs | Neither — use JetBrains Junie instead |
| You have Firebase Studio workspaces to migrate | Migrate now — deadline March 22, 2027 |
The Honest Assessment
Google's consolidation story is the right one strategically. Two flagship tools — AI Studio for exploration, Antigravity for production — is cleaner than four overlapping products. And the technical ambition is real: parallel agents, browser-native verification, structured Artifacts, and the deepest Firebase integration in the market.
But Google's track record on product continuity is a legitimate concern. Firebase Studio lasted under 12 months. Gemini CLI was retired abruptly. Antigravity's quota instability in early 2026 damaged trust with early adopters. If you're considering building your core development workflow around Antigravity, that history is worth weighing.
For solo developers and small teams, the free tier is compelling enough to try without commitment. For teams evaluating a primary tool, Cursor and Windsurf currently offer more predictable pricing and longer track records — and Claude Code delivers higher benchmark scores for complex autonomous work.
Antigravity is the most ambitious AI coding tool on the market. Whether it becomes the most reliable one is the story of the next 12 months.
Quick Reference
| Product | Status | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Project IDX | ❌ Absorbed into Firebase Studio (2025) | Early cloud IDE experiment |
| Firebase Studio | ⚠️ Sunsetting March 22, 2027 | Full-stack browser IDE |
| Google AI Studio | ✅ Active | Prototyping + Build mode |
| Antigravity IDE | ✅ Active | Agent-first VS Code fork |
| Antigravity Desktop | ✅ Active (2.0, launched May 2026) | Multi-agent orchestration hub |
| Antigravity CLI | ✅ Active | Terminal-native agent interface |
| Gemini CLI | ❌ Retired June 18, 2026 | Replaced by Antigravity CLI |
| Firebase (backend) | ✅ Fully active | Agent-native backend services |
Product statuses and pricing verified as of June 2026. This space moves fast — check official Google documentation for the latest.
Which Google tool are you currently using, and are you planning to migrate? Drop a comment below.
Tags: googleaistudio, antigravity, firebase, ai, devtools
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