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Head to head · Agent harnesses · October 2026 research run

Antigravity CLI vs Kiro CLI

Kiro CLI scores 59.9 (C) on agent readiness against Antigravity CLI's 57.7 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Antigravity CLI leads on agent ergonomics. Both do agent harnesses.

Best agent harnesses and coding agents · All 186 harnesses comparisons

Antigravity CLIGoogle · Agent harness C57.7/100#599 of 954 Kiro CLIAmazon Web Services · Agent harness C59.9/100#537 of 954

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

  • Agent ergonomics, 78 against 67

Also in its favour

  • No incidents deducted, where Kiro CLI loses 4 points for them

Watch for

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

Kiro CLI C

Best for Teams on AWS that want one agent configuration across terminal, IDE and web, with central permission policy, prompt logging to their own S3 bucket and IAM Identity Centre sign-in.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 57 against 43
  • Security & auth, 66 against 53
  • Payments & pricing, 40 against 30
  • Maintenance & community, 73 against 68
  • Transparency & trust, 67 against 54

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card

Watch for

Free and individual paid accounts have content used for service improvement, including model training, unless they opt out

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runAntigravity CLIKiro CLIEdge
Reliability16%204357Kiro CLI +14
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27879Kiro CLI +1
Agent ergonomics13%16.27867Antigravity CLI +11
Security & auth14%17.55366Kiro CLI +13
Payments & pricing10%12.53040Kiro CLI +10
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.86873Kiro CLI +5
Transparency & trust7%8.85467Kiro CLI +13
Negative events≤150-4
TotalC 57.7/100C 59.9/100

Facts side by side

FactAntigravity CLIKiro CLI
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorGoogleAmazon Web Services
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
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 PolicyProprietary. Licensed as AWS Content under the AWS Customer Agreement and the AWS Intellectual Property Licence (https://kiro.dev/license/). The GitHub repository is the public issue tracker and doesn't hold the source
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-082026-10-05
Terms last updated2026-08-14
Privacy policy last updated2026-10-012026-05-18
Customer content may train modelsyesnot found in the text
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 waiveryes
Popularitynone4.4k stars

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.

Kiro CLI

Permission rules follow deny over ask over allow, cloned repositories can't add rules, and a headless session treats every ask as a deny. Content from Free and individual paid accounts is used for service improvement, including model training, unless the user opts out, and API keys for pipelines need a paid plan.

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

Kiro CLI

  1. Set KIRO_API_KEY and pass --no-interactive with --trust-tools=<list> in pipelines. Keep --trust-all-tools for disposable environments
  2. Pass --require-mcp-startup when a run depends on MCP tools. Without it a failed server is logged and the run continues
  3. Pass --no-interactive whenever input is piped from a source you don't control, and run 2.10.0 or later on Windows
  4. Run kiro-cli settings telemetry.enabled false and turn off content collection on Free and individual plans. Both are on by default
  5. Export variables in the shell before starting. Since 2.24.0 a project .env file is no longer loaded into sessions, MCP servers or tools

Questions

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

Kiro CLI scores 59.9 (C) on agent readiness against Antigravity CLI's 57.7 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Antigravity CLI leads on agent ergonomics.

Other comparisons with Antigravity CLI or Kiro CLI

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