Why I stopped rolling my eyes and started building with Antigravity

I have a confession to make. For the last six months, my YouTube has been an exhausting parade of hyperbole and extreme AI rhetoric. There seems to have been an escalation. If I had a pound for every time I saw a thumbnail of someone looking shocked next to a headline like 'Antigravity is INSANE!!!' or 'Claude Code just BLEW MY MIND', I could probably fund my own data centre.

We have all seen the pattern. A twenty minute video claims that Clawdbot just WON AI because it generated a samey landing page with a flickering button. As someone who builds digital products, this kind of extreme rhetoric usually triggers my 'ignore' reflex. Not because I'm not interested; more because it's all too noisy. It feels less like a technological revolution and more like a high stakes shout-off.

I'm well aware of the usual (and valid) criticisms of AI for coding. We've all heard the horror stories, or maybe even experienced them.

The 'veneer' problem: Great looking frontends that have absolutely no functional backend logic or structure behind them.

Spaghetti architecture: Code that works in isolation but becomes a tangled, unmaintainable mess the moment you try to scale.

Security nightmares: Exposed API keys, lack of sanitisation, and wide open vulnerabilities.

Context blindness: Models that forget the original goal three prompts in, succumb to context-rot and start hallucinating requirements that don't exist.

It is easy to dismiss these tools as toys for people who want to play at being developers without doing the hard work. But having finite resources and sufficient curiosity, I decided to get stuck in and actually build with the latest tool (granted, 'latest' is a description that ages like milk).

Putting Antigravity to the test

Over the last few weeks, I used Antigravity to build out two fully functional applications from scratch. These were not just "Hello World" demos; they are complex tools with logic, database integrations, RLS, multi-tenancy and real world utility.

Here is why I am actually, quietly, very impressed with how Antigravity behaved:

• Refactoring capability: It did not just write new code. When I asked it to change a fundamental data structure, it went through the existing files and updated dependencies with surprising accuracy.

• Contextual memory: Unlike my earlier battles with AI coding tools, it seemed to 'understand' concepts like the relationship between frontend components and backend API calls without me having to remind it every five minutes.

• Error correction: When something failed, it would notice before I did, and get to work on a fix right away. If I saw an issue in the front end, I could get it to watch a screen recording, to understand the problem. Then come up with a plan.

• Boilerplate elimination: It handled the soul-crushing tasks, like setting up environment variables and basic CRUD operations, in seconds, allowing me to focus on the unique value of the app.

• Enthusiasm: Hear me out… I know AI can be quite sycophantic. But human devs can be quite jaded. It's a refreshing change.

• Tenacity: See above!

A balanced reality check

Let's be clear: No, you cannot 'plan, design, build and sell' an app in the time it takes to brew your morning matcha latte. That's not a thing.

The reality is more of a partnership. To get good results, you need a clear vision of what 'good' looks like. You have to be prepared to grind through the edge cases (this is not a trivial undertaking), guide the AI when it takes a wrong turn, and apply your own knowledge and human intuition to the user experience.

However, once you find that flow, the speed of execution is transformative. If you are willing to act as the architect and the lead editor rather than just a passive prompter, the results are undeniable. Think pilot, not passenger.

And, honestly? Despite the clickbait, it actually is insane what you can achieve now.

It's not sustainable or desirable to jump on every new AI app, tool or development environment. So I'd say a better strategy is to focus on what works for you, form good AI habits and take a calm 'once in a while' approach to trying new things. Ignore any FOMO. If the latest tool is really that great, I have a feeling you'll hear about it.