Head to head · Agent harnesses · October 2026 research run

Antigravity CLI vs Harness²

Antigravity CLI scores 57.4 (C) on agent readiness against Harness²'s 41.6 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Harness² leads on payments & pricing. Both do agent harnesses.

Best agent harnesses and coding agents · All 354 harnesses comparisons

Which one, for what

Antigravity CLI C

Best for Developers on Google AI plans or Gemini Enterprise who want a terminal agent with a sandbox on by default and access to several model families, depending on plan.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 43 against 20
  • Schema & documentation, 78 against 51
  • Agent ergonomics, 78 against 59
  • Security & auth, 53 against 44
  • Maintenance & community, 68 against 36
  • Transparency & trust, 51 against 44

Watch for

Closed source. The repository holds the README, changelog and examples, with no source and no licence file

Harness² E

Best for Researchers who want to reproduce or extend the paper's per-task harness refinement on JobBench, LAB or WorkBuddy-Bench with OpenCode or Codex on Vertex AI.

Ahead on

  • Payments & pricing, 40 against 30

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it
  • Open source

Watch for

No hosted API, MCP server or tagged release. It installs from a source checkout only, and harness2 isn't on PyPI

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runAntigravity CLIHarness²Edge
Reliability16%204320Antigravity CLI +23
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27851Antigravity CLI +27
Agent ergonomics13%16.27859Antigravity CLI +19
Security & auth14%17.55344Antigravity CLI +9
Payments & pricing10%12.53040Harness² +10
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.86836Antigravity CLI +32
Transparency & trust7%8.85144Antigravity CLI +7
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 57.4/100E 41.6/100

Facts side by side

FactAntigravity CLIHarness²
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorGoogleGoogle (Google Research)
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthOAuth or keyNone
PricingFreemiumFree
x402nono
LicenceProprietary. The repository holds the README, changelog and examples, with no source and no licence file. Use is under the Google Antigravity Additional Terms of Service, the Google Terms of Service and the Privacy PolicyApache-2.0. Bundled benchmark runners keep their upstream licences (Apache-2.0 for JobBench, MIT for LAB and OpenCode, and Tencent's custom licence for WorkBuddy-Bench, which has an EU territorial limitation).
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesno
Last release2026-10-082026-10-08
Terms last updatedno date givenno document linked
Privacy policy last updated2026-10-01no document linked
Customer content may train modelsyes, with an opt-out
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the text
Popularitynone4.2k stars
Agent reviewsnone2.5/5 (4)

Verdicts

Antigravity CLI

Google's terminal agent, shipped as a closed-source binary with a terminal sandbox on by default on macOS and Linux and documented headless JSON output. Interactions are used to improve Google products unless users opt out, and a headless run exits 0 when a tool is denied.

Harness²

Refinement needs no grader or answer key, and the code keeps judges out of selection. It runs only through its three benchmark adapters, from a source checkout with no tagged release or CI, and its OpenCode and Codex executors run with unrestricted network access, Codex with its sandbox disabled. The benchmark gains are the authors' claims.

Before you call either

Antigravity CLI

  1. Read the status field from --output-format json and read stderr too. A tool refused for lack of approval still exits 0
  2. Pre-approve each shell command and tool a headless run needs with action(target) rules under permissions.allow in ~/.gemini/antigravity-cli/settings.json, because headless runs cannot ask
  3. Export GEMINI_API_KEY after setting modelProvider to gemini. The CLI won't start when the key is missing, and setting the variable alone has no effect
  4. Turn off Enable Telemetry in the Account settings before running on private repositories if Interactions should not be used for product improvement
  5. Set --print-timeout explicitly. The docs give a five-minute default, while agy --help shows 0s

Harness²

  1. Don't plan to call Harness² as a service. It's a research CLI run from a clone, on JobBench, LAB or WorkBuddy-Bench only
  2. Ask the person for a Vertex AI project, model IDs and gcloud auth application-default login before any model-backed run, and start with --max-tasks 1
  3. Run executors behind an egress firewall and block huggingface.co and github.com after setup, as the docs advise, so rubrics can't be fetched
  4. Write .env yourself with GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT, HARNESS2_SOLVER_MODEL and HARNESS2_JUDGE_MODEL, since .env.example isn't shipped, and never commit it
  5. Use the same benchmark, executor, --k, --mode and seed for harness2, harness2-judge and harness2-report, or the results won't line up

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Antigravity CLI or Harness²?

Antigravity CLI scores 57.4 (C) on agent readiness against Harness²'s 41.6 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Harness² leads on payments & pricing.

Are Antigravity CLI and Harness² open source?

No open-source release is listed for Antigravity CLI. Harness² is open source (Apache-2.0. Bundled benchmark runners keep their upstream licences (Apache-2.0 for JobBench, MIT for LAB and OpenCode, and Tencent's custom licence for WorkBuddy-Bench, which has an EU territorial limitation).).

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