Gemini 4 Hydrogen and Orchestrator (antigravity.google)

338 points by jonbaer 9 hours ago

vegardx 8 hours ago

This is essentially what Anthropic does with the advisor mode and what GitHub does with their multi-model pipeline using the HydraFusion model, which is just a large set of different models with different qualities used in a pipeline to produce an answer.

What I don't understand is how they all make it work with caching in general. Looking at how the advisor mode in claude work you seem to only be billed the output tokens and cache hit on the whole session when it calls out to the advisor, making it super cheap compared to running the more expensive model for the entire session.

jeremyjjj 7 hours ago

Pretty sure on advisor it needs to send the entire context to another model. The cost is mitigated a bit because there would be few output tokens from the advisor model normally.

Orchestrator seems to automatically delegate things to subagents as required is my read of it. This should be fine for caching.

onlyrealcuzzo an hour ago

> This should be fine for caching.

When launching a swarm of smaller models, they can theoretically share cache amongst themselves, but not with the larger model (that already has it cached). They have different architectures.

Further, it wouldn't really make sense for them to share the same cache anyway! The swarm, that is, they'd be working on independent things...

lemonish97 8 hours ago

I've found hydrafusion to be great, although it sometimes does an unnecessary review pass at the end for simple tasks too.

rsalus 43 minutes ago

Yeah, like how is it not constantly compacting when routing between models?

artdigital 5 hours ago

There were so many memes about “Gemini Hydrogen” after they released Carbon. That they actually released a model named Hydrogen makes this very funny

But a new Flash model is very welcome. Argon and Carbon are very slow. In the time it takes for them to complete a single task, Opus already managed to complete multiple things. They’re so slow, I started using 3.8 Flash over them. (A lot of it is also because of how terrible agy is. Before doing any task, Gemini feels the need to hover up a bazillion files into its context when the task is something simple like “update the docs of this controller”)

Also this sounds like Argon is dead now

thomasahle 3 hours ago

> There were so many memes about “Gemini Hydrogen” after they released Carbon

Is Carbon actually released yet?

kvnrw 3 hours ago

guelo 18 minutes ago

satvikpendem 3 hours ago

gunalx 3 hours ago

I'm so confused by their new naming scheme. What was wrong with number and pro/flash/flash lite.

jakedowns 3 hours ago

seriously... S / M / L why does everything have to be a branding/marketing exercise?

pavo-etc 3 minutes ago

then they can do XL 2xl 3xl when they want to go further

zaphirplane 2 hours ago

I wondered the same as a kid about cars, maker - model - variant would just be nice if it was consistent.

Anyways when a new model is released they want to have some interest and hopefully some tyre kickers will stick and hoping some social medial coverage

Barbing 2 hours ago

large, gigantic, and humongous - like NASA toilet gear

apt-apt-apt-apt 2 hours ago

gemini argon carbon hydrogen antigravity orchestrator pro flash flash-lite

Really

pants2 an hour ago

It's additionally confusing to me because Hydrogen < Carbon < Argon on the periodic table, but Hydrogen < Argon < Carbon in Google's models.

arccy 2 hours ago

just learn some chemistry...

jatora 2 hours ago

maybe you should learn some chemistry. if you know chemistry, the progression of Argon, Carbon, Hydrogen... doesn't make much sense

fmind-dev 8 hours ago

Excellent mode! I don't have to constantly switch between models and efforts.

fuussssip 8 hours ago

I'm really curious how folks feel about this. I regularly use subagents, but typically make my primary implementation agent use Carbon (or equivalent).

I set up my subagents with specific models based on how complex I believe the problem space is. I'm nervous to delegate that authority to a model (since models tend to be... optimistic about their capabilities.)

That said, not every coding task is a difficult coding task. Plenty are boilerplate, plumbing, or simple test authoring that could use a flash model, so maybe this would downgrade nicely.

On the other hand, it's trivial for me to set up some guidelines to create different subagents for different task domains, and just pin those models to those tasks -- implementor (hard) and implementor (easy) or whatever.

pietz 8 hours ago

The only reason to do this is to save usage on the subscription. but because the value for money is so terrible in antigravity, you’re better off just using Claude Opus or GPT Sol for everything.

I’m glad Google is kinda back, but today there’s no reason to code with Gemini.

vrosas 8 hours ago

FWIW I've found the complete opposite to be true, and have gone claude->chatgpt->gemini over the past few months.

imafish 7 hours ago

pietz 6 hours ago

jbellis 4 hours ago

I'm honestly surprised they only see 25% savings with co-trained models and special harness support. With Mjolnir bridging Opus to DeepSeek Flash over ACP we see savings of 60%.

https://blog.slopcop.com/a-cheapskates-guide-to-coding-with-...

quibono 4 hours ago

I.e. in this context Opus is the big brains orchestrator and it delegates to DeepSeek Flash subagents?

Intriguing, I might have to try this out - I have an OpenCode Go sub for the deepseeks of the world, and a Claude sub too. Sounds like I could have the best of both worlds here.

jbellis 2 hours ago

Right, scenario 1 Opus delegates to DSF

scenario 2 DSF drives, but gets to ask Opus for advice

timshel2 6 hours ago

Whatever they've done to this webpage makes it feel slow and quite horrible to use. Just leave scrolling alone

rozap 5 hours ago

I like the visual artifact across all the text when you scroll, very nice.

zomiaen 5 hours ago

I am shocked Google let this out to the public performing like this.

2III7 5 hours ago

No scrolling issues with safari on an old iphone.

refactor_master 20 minutes ago

Isn't that because Chrome is forced to use the same rendering engine on iOS? Whereas on macOS, Safari is total garbage across all of Google's sites and products compared to Chrome, for very obvious reasons.

hnav 5 hours ago

They managed to kill swipe left/right to navigate. Scroll interactions should be behind a permission.

bcmyguest 5 hours ago

They had Gemini review it

cloverich 8 hours ago

> Orchestrator takes a dynamic, bidirectional approach between Carbon and Gemini 4 Hydrogen within the evolution of a single trajectory. For example, Carbon can start in a read-only phase to explore dependencies, resolve ambiguities, and build a concrete plan with explicit re-planning triggers. Hydrogen could then take over to write edits, update packages, and run tests. If Hydrogen hits friction, it would hand back to Carbon to inspect the state, repair the plan, and resume execution. This allows Orchestrator to reach near-Carbon task success while being faster and more quota-efficient. On Terminal-Bench 4.1, Orchestrator reached near-Carbon task success rates while, on average, consuming 24% less quota and completing 19% faster.

Is this now how e.g. Opus works now? I use Opus 5.5 on high for just about everything now, and my bill's not gone up (gone down actually). I had assumed under the hood it was doing this (e.g. I'm sure its not literally Opus doing the log checking / file searches). Towards Google's choice, I'm skeptical introducing a new concept (Orchestrator) for this is really necessary, when they could have just done it by default, unless its plainly lower quality than pinning Carbon.

sanex 2 hours ago

I found when fable first came out when I switched from opus my usage actually went down. Personal theory was that since it was smarter it took fewer tokens to accomplish the same tasks.

gnabgib 9 hours ago

Discussion (191 points, 121 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50471431

thehamkercat 9 hours ago

Not the same article, this one has orchestrator and some antigravity stuff

gnabgib 4 hours ago

Indeed, all the 4/Hydrogen submissions were from different sources, but *sigh* the exact same conversation is happening here as other threads.. almost as if it's the same topic.

weird-eye-issue an hour ago

> Today, we’re rolling out Gemini 4 Hydrogen inside Google Antigravity alongside a new model dropdown option called Orchestrator, which pairs Hydrogen with our strongest models for long-horizon tasks, including Gemini 4 Carbon, in an optimized balance of quality, efficiency, and latency.

Wow, that's a lot of new words

_continuation an hour ago

Here is an idea; if you are seeing this from Google office, pls use Gemini 4 xs m l xl for naming, not as sexy, but it will be less confusing.

jonplackett 8 hours ago

And I thought OpenAI’s name scheme was confusing.

winstonp 7 hours ago

I don't understand which model is supposed to be better. I think Carbon is the big model and Hydrogen the Flash equivalent? Only because of a Twitter leak though. Like I have no earthly idea based on the naming.

JacobAsmuth 7 hours ago

Carbon = bigger, Hydrogen = smaller.

Ignore all other models.

arbot360 3 hours ago

ainch 7 hours ago

I guess carbon has a higher atomic number than hydrogen? It's definitely the least intuitive of all the naming schemes...

cuvinny 7 hours ago

arbot360 3 hours ago

Jtarii 7 hours ago

I thought it was just sorted alphabetically so Argon < Carbon < Hydrogen.

stopsayingsorry 7 hours ago

There is nothing confusing about it if you're at least a little bit educated. If anything, they are the least confusing, Ant drops the ball at opus->fable. For OpenAI, it's:

Luna, means "moon", smallest.

Terra, means "earth", bigger than the moon.

Sol, means "sun", the biggest object in the solar system.

Astra, plural of the word "astrum" which means "star".

Anyone who gets confused should be embarrassed.

Yizahi 5 hours ago

All of those are deducible, sure. The problem is that the pattern works only when they are all listed together. Person sees the list and can logically infer where they belong. But when I see the single model name detached from it's siblings, like "OAI releases new Terra 7.7" headline, for quite a long time I had zero idea where it belongs just from my memory. Was that a big model, a small model, a medium model - no idea. Now after a few HN topics I do remember the lineup and can place the new announce where it belongs.

pests 7 hours ago

Why give an OpenAI answer when the confusion is about Gemini model names? What does Luna Terra or Sol have to do with Argon, Carbon, or Hydrogen?

stopsayingsorry 6 hours ago

mtlmtlmtlmtl 5 hours ago

To be fair, I knew all of those words already, and it never even occured to me that these names are supposed to be compared to eachother to indicate size or something. So, at least to me, it's not that it confuses me, it just imparted no information, because a collection of astronomical names and terms doesn't automatically indicate an ordering to me, it just indicates that nerds like naming their stuff after scientific terms and concepts, sci-fi stuff, etc.

I mean, this is what numbers are for. And not only do numbers indicate ordering(without having to do a mapping through severely atrophied school science class knowledge from decades ago), they can also convey meaningful size information using the wonderful technology of units of measurement.

sirk390 6 hours ago

OpenAI model names used to be confusing. He’s not talking about Luna, Terra, sol, Astra. They improved it a lot .

wellnowudontsay 6 hours ago

I refuse to walk among you rabble. You rabid mouth-breathers. I refuse I tell you.

The only models worth _my_ time are Σεληνη, Γη, Ἡλιος and Αστρα.

I don’t know what to tell you illiterate heretics other than you should know you are bad people. You should be ashamed of yourselves.

The truly αμεταπειστοι among us, the people _I_ hang out with, know these things by their proper name. Which is to say, naturally, 𒌗 and 𒆠 or, if you were even somewhat educated: 𓇹, 𓇾 and 𓇳 (praise be to Ra, the Great Unborn).

It saddens me to see HN has fallen to this level.

throwaway173738 5 hours ago

hoppp 5 hours ago

I have no idea what's going on with Gemini naming. Maybe it's an inside joke or something.

threecheese 7 hours ago

Before I go and burn through my Pro tokens in four minutes again (looking at you, Argon): is this something usable with a mere Pro account? Or will this require Ultimate for agy?

speckx 5 hours ago

It's in Google Workspace as well. I'm on the enterprise workspace tier. So I'm not sure if that's why.

trvz 6 hours ago

I’m on the Pro (~20$) plan, and it’s available for me, having replaced 3.8 Flash.

anderber 6 hours ago

I have Pro and I see the new hydrogen model. But not the Orchestrator.

0gs 7 hours ago

nope. Ultra only like any Carbon use, for now

smcameron 6 hours ago

"Gemini 4 Hydrogen" shows up as something I can select in antigravity CLI, while "Gemini 4 Carbon" is "Unavailable · Gemini 4 Carbon is currently available to Ultra plan subscribers."

Also 3.8 flash is still visible for me (contrary to what a previous poster experienced.)

I have the "Google AI Pro" plan.

0gs 7 hours ago

hear me out, finance: two hydrogens, but we call one carbon and allow it to do five more things than hydrogen can. and you can't do the pair-bonded mode for less than $100. by golly it just might work

egeozcan 8 hours ago

Are there still some web devs (or LLMs with "rockstar front-end developer" prompts) which think it's ok to override native scroll behavior?

ps. it's freaking not

flats 7 hours ago

Amen, what the heck—after double-tapping to zoom and center the text on this page in Safari, scrolling down with a 2-finger touch gesture...also scrolls to the left? I struggle to understand how or why one would ever mess with such behavior.

small_model 7 hours ago

Terrible naming, unless the atomic weight is some indication of size? When is Uranium-235 coming out? Not sure what this model is, is Hydrogen like Sonnet where Carbon is like Opus?

konart 7 hours ago

Thing is Carbon should be in the middle by this logic. But no - it is their heavyweight model.

myko 3 hours ago

How did they fuck scrolling up on a page like this

NeuraCryption 7 hours ago

Is google playing chemistry? First they launch Carbon, then hydrogen now next will be oxygen. Are they making models around periodic table of elements?

acoster 7 hours ago

Sundar did say we'd periodically release new models.

pmarreck 7 hours ago

I accept this dadjoke