This post announces the next stage of Conductor (Gemini CLI extension), which Google introduced the previous year to bring Spec-driven development to the terminal by moving project awareness out of ephemeral chat logs and into persistent, version-controlled Markdown files. Conductor is changing from a Gemini CLI extension into the Conductor Plugin — a package that, as the post describes plugins, can include skills, rules, MCP servers and hooks together.
Two changes follow from that, according to the post. Conductor stops requiring strict command sequences and works conversationally, generating context, specs and plans as the developer discusses a feature; and it is no longer tied to Gemini CLI, so it can be used from Antigravity CLI and other tools. The post presents both as keeping the procedural rigor of spec-driven development while removing friction from it.
Key Points
- The persistent Markdown artifacts stay:
spec.mdandplan.mdare still produced, but creating and iterating on them is meant to feel like chatting with an assistant. - Conductor is described as deciding for itself when to update the project’s context or check off a completed task in the plan, managing project state in the background while the developer focuses on architecture.
- As a plugin, Conductor is presented as portable across tools: foundational documents on the project’s architecture, guidelines and goals, together with shared configuration and ongoing development tracks, persist so that work started in one tool can be continued in another.
- Backwards compatibility is claimed with old Conductor commands and with existing plans and specs.
- The post names Antigravity CLI and Claude as tools the plugin can be used in.
- Google claims the Conductor Plugin achieved a higher success rate than a user not using spec-driven development on the most complex subset of Terminal-Bench tasks. The post gives no figures, task counts or method for this comparison.
- Installation is from the plugin’s GitHub repository, or into Antigravity CLI with
agy plugins install https://github.com/gemini-cli-extensions/conductor; a hands-on Codelab is also offered.
Context
The post is Google’s announcement of a change to its own tool, and its performance claim is stated without supporting data. It restates Conductor’s mission as helping make AI development “safe, predictable, and architecturally sound”, and treats the repository as the single source of truth for a project, with the plugin changing how a developer interacts with that truth rather than where it lives.