Gemini 3 - Google's New Frontier in Agentic AI

Google has released Gemini 3, marking what CEO Sundar Pichai calls the company's most intelligent AI model to date. Released on November 18, 2025, Gemini 3 represents a significant leap forward in agentic capabilities—AI systems that can plan, execute, and complete multi-step workflows autonomously rather than simply responding to single prompts.

What Makes Gemini 3 Different

At its core, Gemini 3 combines three key advances that Google has been building toward over the past year:

1. Deep reasoning capabilities that approach human-level depth and nuance
2. Improved, consistent tool use for navigating complex workflows
3. Native multimodal understanding across text, images, video, and code

The result is an AI that doesn't just answer questions—it can take action on your behalf, managing entire workflows from start to finish while keeping you in control.

Agentic Capabilities: The Gemini Way

While Anthropic's Claude introduced the concept of "Computer Use" and various AI assistants have offered automation features, Google's approach to agentic AI with Gemini 3 takes a distinctly different path.

Gemini Agent: Multi-Step Task Execution

The most prominent agentic feature is Gemini Agent, currently available to Google AI Ultra subscribers ($250/month). Unlike simple automation tools, Gemini Agent can:

• Navigate complex workflows end-to-end: Book local services, organize your inbox, research and plan travel itineraries
• Coordinate across Google's ecosystem: Integrates with Gmail, Calendar, Canvas, and live web browsing
• Break down complex requests: Uses techniques like Deep Research and "query fan-out" to decompose high-level instructions into actionable steps
• Maintain user control: Seeks confirmation before critical actions like purchases or sending messages

Think of it as having a junior assistant who can plan, execute, and validate tasks—but always checks with you before doing anything irreversible.

Google Antigravity: Agentic Development Platform

For developers, Google introduced Google Antigravity, an AI-first integrated development environment (IDE) that reimagines how we build software. Instead of AI being a code completion tool, Antigravity makes AI agents full development partners:

• Direct access to editor, terminal, and browser: Agents can autonomously navigate your development environment
• End-to-end software task execution: Plan, code, debug, and validate—all while you supervise
• Multi-model orchestration: Combines Gemini 3 Pro for reasoning, Gemini 2.5 Computer Use for browser control, and Nano Banana for image understanding
• Client-side bash tool: Gemini can propose and execute shell commands for filesystem navigation, build processes, and system operations

Antigravity also supports Claude Sonnet 4.5 and GPT-OSS agents, making it model-agnostic for developers who want flexibility.

How Gemini's Approach Differs from Claude Skills

While both systems aim to make AI more capable of sustained, multi-step work, there are key differences:

Gemini's strategy leans heavily on structured tool use and API integration, while Claude's Computer Use focuses on generic UI automation. Both are powerful, but for different use cases—Gemini excels when working within Google's ecosystem and with structured workflows, while Claude offers more flexibility for arbitrary computer tasks.

Context Window and Performance

Gemini 3 builds on the foundation of Gemini 1's breakthrough in native multimodality and long context windows. While specific context window sizes weren't highlighted in the release, Gemini 3 demonstrates strong long-context performance:

• 77.0% on MRCR v2 (8-needle test, 128k tokens average)
• Significantly ahead of Claude (47.1%) and GPT-5.1 (61.6%) on long-context retrieval

The model can process and reason across massive amounts of information, which is critical for agentic workflows that require maintaining context across multi-step operations.

Benchmark Performance: Is Gemini 3 the Best?

Google claims Gemini 3 Pro "outperforms its predecessor and OpenAI's GPT-5.1 on every major benchmark." Here's what the data shows:

Coding Excellence

• LiveCodeBench Pro: 2,439 (vs GPT-5.1's 2,243, Claude's 1,418)
• Terminal-Bench 2.0 (agentic coding): 54.2% (vs Claude's 42.8%, GPT-5.1's 47.6%)
• SWE-Bench Verified (single-attempt coding): 76.2% (Claude edges it out at 77.2%)
• WebDev Arena: Currently leads the leaderboard

Math and Science

• Leads in math reasoning and science benchmarks
• Excels in multimodal understanding—called "the best model in the world for multimodal understanding"

Agentic Capabilities

• t2-bench (agentic tool use): 85.4%
• Strong performance on multi-step reasoning and planning tasks

The verdict: Gemini 3 Pro is currently leading most benchmarks, particularly in coding, math, multimodal understanding, and agentic workflows. It trades the top spot with Claude 4.5 Sonnet in a few areas (like SWE-Bench), making it extremely competitive but not universally "the best" across every possible metric.

Availability and Access

Gemini 3 Pro is available now:

• Gemini app: All users (free and paid)
• AI Mode in Google Search: Paid subscribers
• Google AI Studio and Vertex AI: Developers
• GitHub Copilot: Rolling out for Pro, Pro+, Business, and Enterprise subscriptions
• Gemini Agent: Google AI Ultra subscribers only ($250/month)

Notably, this is the first time Google has shipped a new model in Search on day one, signaling confidence in Gemini 3's readiness.

What This Means for the Future

Gemini 3 represents Google's vision of AI evolving from conversational assistants to operational agents. The focus on:

• Agentic workflows over single-shot generation
• Multi-step planning with tool coordination
• Multimodal understanding for real-world applications
• Developer-first platforms like Antigravity

...suggests we're moving toward AI that doesn't just help us think—it helps us do, while maintaining human oversight and control.

Whether Gemini 3 is "the best" depends on what you need it for. But there's no question it represents a major leap forward in making AI genuinely useful for complex, sustained work—and Google's integrated ecosystem gives it unique advantages in certain workflows that competitors will struggle to match.

Links

Official Google Announcements

• URL: https://blog.google/products/gemini/gemini-3/↗
• Summary: Official launch announcement detailing Gemini 3's agentic capabilities, including Gemini Agent for multi-step workflows like booking services and organizing email, all while keeping users in control.
• Related: Claude, ChatGPT, Google Search

Developer-Focused Overview

• URL: https://blog.google/technology/developers/gemini-3-developers/↗
• Summary: Technical breakdown of Gemini 3 for developers, introducing the client-side bash tool for agentic workflows, Google Antigravity platform, and advanced coding capabilities that surpass Gemini 2.5 Pro.
• Related: Visual Studio Code, GitHub Copilot

Benchmark Analysis

• URL: https://officechai.com/ai/gemini-3-benchmarks/↗
• Summary: Comprehensive analysis of Gemini 3's benchmark performance across coding (LiveCodeBench Pro: 2,439), agentic tasks (Terminal-Bench 2.0: 54.2%), and long-context retrieval (MRCR v2: 77.0%), demonstrating leads over GPT-5.1 and Claude 4.5 Sonnet in most categories.
• Related: AI Benchmarks, Large Language Models

Gemini App Updates

• URL: https://blog.google/products/gemini/gemini-3-gemini-app/↗
• Summary: Overview of new Gemini app features powered by Gemini 3, including generative interfaces with visual layouts, dynamic views, and Gemini Agent for handling multi-step tasks with Google Workspace integration.
• Related: Google Workspace, Gmail, Google Calendar