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Head to head · Multi-agent orchestration · October 2026 research run

Antigravity CLI vs Paperclip

Paperclip scores 59 (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 multi-agent orchestration.

Best agent harnesses and coding agents · All 186 harnesses comparisons

Antigravity CLIGoogle · Agent harness C57.7/100#599 of 954 PaperclipPaperclip Labs, Inc. · Agent harness C59/100#567 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 70

Also in its favour

  • No incidents deducted, where Paperclip loses 10 points for them

Watch for

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

Paperclip C

Best for Someone running several coding or operations agents who wants one place for tasks, budgets, approvals and history across harnesses.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 66 against 43
  • Security & auth, 64 against 53
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 30
  • Maintenance & community, 78 against 68
  • Transparency & trust, 65 against 54

Also in its favour

  • Free to start without a card
  • Open source

Watch for

claude_local defaults dangerouslySkipPermissions to true and codex_local defaults to bypassing approvals and the sandbox, with agents running on the host

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runAntigravity CLIPaperclipEdge
Reliability16%204366Paperclip +23
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27881Paperclip +3
Agent ergonomics13%16.27870Antigravity CLI +8
Security & auth14%17.55364Paperclip +11
Payments & pricing10%12.53060Paperclip +30
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.86878Paperclip +10
Transparency & trust7%8.85465Paperclip +11
Negative events≤150-10
TotalC 57.7/100C 59/100

Facts side by side

FactAntigravity CLIPaperclip
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorGooglePaperclip Labs, Inc.
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
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 PolicyMIT
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-082026-10-05
Terms last updated2026-07-23
Privacy policy last updated2026-10-012026-07-23
Customer content may train modelsyesyes, 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 waiveryes
Popularitynone99k stars, 60k npm/wk

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.

Paperclip

Board approvals, budgets with a hard stop and an activity log sit above whichever harnesses do the work, and eleven stable versions shipped in 90 days. The Claude Code and Codex adapters skip permission prompts and the sandbox by default, and twelve security advisories, five of them critical, have been published since April 2026.

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

Paperclip

  1. Set PAPERCLIP_TELEMETRY_DISABLED=1 or DO_NOT_TRACK=1 before the first start. Telemetry is on by default
  2. Set dangerouslySkipPermissions and dangerouslyBypassApprovalsAndSandbox to false on agents that read untrusted input, or run them in a sandbox provider
  3. Install with Node.js 24.11 or newer, and install and sign in to each harness CLI on the host first. Paperclip assumes they are there
  4. Use --bind lan or --bind tailnet at onboarding for anything beyond one machine. The default local_trusted mode treats every request as the board admin
  5. Treat 409 on task checkout as owned by another agent and pick different work. The API docs say not to retry

Questions

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

Paperclip scores 59 (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.

Are Antigravity CLI and Paperclip open source?

No open-source release is listed for Antigravity CLI. Paperclip is open source (MIT).

Other comparisons with Antigravity CLI or Paperclip

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