From Copilot to Multi-Agent, the fourth paradigm of IDEs is here—future product forms will be workflows themselves, not code files.

The head of Google Antigravity responded to the controversy over splitting the IDE and Agent Manager into separate applications, admitting that the transition details were not handled well enough and working overtime to fix them, while explaining the product rationale behind the split. He said that AI development has entered the fourth paradigm: evolving from code completion to intelligent dialogue, from a single intelligent agent to multi-agent collaboration. To meet rapidly growing demand, the team decided to completely separate the two, enabling users to manage dozens to hundreds of intelligent agents. In the future, tools will be “work is the product” instead of “code files as products.”