Design and deploy an application using Antigravity CLI

Use the Gemini Cloud Assist and Application Design Center Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers to design, deploy, and troubleshoot Google Cloud infrastructure directly in the Antigravity CLI.

Objectives

This tutorial helps you do the following:

Set up the Antigravity CLI to use Gemini Cloud Assist and App Design Center MCP servers.
Design and deploy Google Cloud infrastructure that is optimized to run your existing application code.
Analyze and troubleshoot technical issues.

Costs

In this document, you use the following billable components of Google Cloud:

App Design Center.
Google Cloud resources that you create as part of your application infrastructure.

To generate a cost estimate based on your projected usage, use the pricing calculator.

New Google Cloud users might be eligible for a free trial.

When you finish the tasks that are described in this document, you can avoid continued billing by deleting the resources that you created. For more information, see Clean up.

Before you begin

Sign in to your Google Cloud account. If you're new to Google Cloud, create an account to evaluate how our products perform in real-world scenarios. New customers also get $300 in free credits to run, test, and deploy workloads.

Install the Google Cloud CLI.

If you're using an external identity provider (IdP), you must first sign in to the gcloud CLI with your federated identity.

To initialize the gcloud CLI, run the following command:

gcloud init

Create or select a Google Cloud project.

Roles required to select or create a project

Select a project: Selecting a project doesn't require a specific IAM role—you can select any project that you've been granted a role on.
Create a project: To create a project, you need the Project Creator role (roles/resourcemanager.projectCreator), which contains the resourcemanager.projects.create permission. Learn how to grant roles.

Create a Google Cloud project:
```
gcloud projects create PROJECT_ID
```
Replace PROJECT_ID with a name for the Google Cloud project you are creating.
Select the Google Cloud project that you created:
```
gcloud config set project PROJECT_ID
```
Replace PROJECT_ID with your Google Cloud project name.

Verify that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project.

Install the Google Cloud CLI.

If you're using an external identity provider (IdP), you must first sign in to the gcloud CLI with your federated identity.

To initialize the gcloud CLI, run the following command:

gcloud init

Create or select a Google Cloud project.

Roles required to select or create a project

Select a project: Selecting a project doesn't require a specific IAM role—you can select any project that you've been granted a role on.
Create a project: To create a project, you need the Project Creator role (roles/resourcemanager.projectCreator), which contains the resourcemanager.projects.create permission. Learn how to grant roles.

Create a Google Cloud project:
```
gcloud projects create PROJECT_ID
```
Replace PROJECT_ID with a name for the Google Cloud project you are creating.
Select the Google Cloud project that you created:
```
gcloud config set project PROJECT_ID
```
Replace PROJECT_ID with your Google Cloud project name.

Verify that billing is enabled for your Google Cloud project.

To access Gemini Cloud Assist through MCP, you must be in the Trusted Tester program. Reach out to your account team to request access.
Install the Antigravity CLI

To deploy and run Antigravity CLI commands, ask your administrator to grant you the necessary roles inside your project boundary, as listed in the following table:

Task	Required roles
Set up App Design Center in your project	Application Design Center Admin (`roles/designcenter.admin`)
Access and call Gemini Cloud Assist through MCP	Gemini Cloud Assist Admin (`roles/geminicloudassist.admin`), or Gemini Cloud Assist Editor (`roles/geminicloudassist.editor`), or Gemini Cloud Assist User (`roles/geminicloudassist.user`)

Prepare the environment

To prepare your environment, authenticate to Google Cloud and enable required services.

Authenticate to Google Cloud

Authenticate to Google Cloud by running the following command in your terminal:

Set up Application Default Credentials to let the MCP servers make API calls.
```
 gcloud auth application-default login
```

Enable APIs

Enable the Gemini Cloud Assist and Application Design Center services in your project.

Enable the Gemini Cloud Assist service in your project:

 gcloud services enable geminicloudassist.googleapis.com

Enable the App Design Center service in your project:

 gcloud services enable designcenter.googleapis.com

Configure the MCP servers

The Gemini Cloud Assist and App Design Center MCP servers help you design, assess, deploy, and troubleshoot Google Cloud infrastructure using natural language prompts. To connect to the MCP servers, configure your Antigravity settings.

To configure Antigravity CLI to use MCP servers, do the following:

Open your MCP configuration file in one of the following locations:
- User scope: To apply settings across all of your Antigravity CLI projects, open ~/.gemini/config/mcp_config.json.
- Workspace scope: To apply settings for a specific Antigravity CLI project, open .agents/mcp_config.json.
If your configuration file doesn't exist, create a new file.

In mcp_config.json, add or merge the following configuration block under the mcpServers key.

  {
    "mcpServers": {
      "gemini-cloud-assist": {
        "serverUrl": "https://geminicloudassist.googleapis.com/mcp",
        "authProviderType": "google_credentials"
      },
      "application-design-center": {
        "serverUrl": "https://designcenter.googleapis.com/mcp",
        "authProviderType": "google_credentials"
      }
    }
  }

This configuration automatically uses your Application Default Credentials.

Save and close your configuration file.
Start the Antigravity CLI.
```
agy
```
Verify that the MCP servers are connected.
```
/mcp list
```

Install `SKILL.md` files

SKILL.md files provide the App Design Center and Gemini Cloud Assist MCP servers instructions and workflows for infrastructure design, deployment, and troubleshooting.

To add SKILL.md files to Antigravity CLI, do the following:

Create a skills/design-and-deploy directory in one of the following locations:
- User scope: To apply settings across all of your Antigravity CLI projects, create ~/.gemini/config/skills/design-and-deploy/.
- Workspace scope: To apply settings for a specific Antigravity CLI project, create .agents/skills/design-and-deploy/.
In the skills/design-and-deploy/ directory, create a SKILL.md file using the content from designing-and-deploying-infrastructure.
Create a skills/google-gemini-cloud-assist directory in one of the following locations:
- User scope: To apply settings across all of your Antigravity CLI projects, create ~/.gemini/config/skills/google-gemini-cloud-assist/.
- Workspace scope: To apply settings for a specific Antigravity CLI project, create .agents/skills/google-gemini-cloud-assist/.
In the skills/google-gemini-cloud-assist/ directory, create a SKILL.md file using the content from operating-google-cloud.
Exit and restart the Antigravity CLI session.