When I put together my full review of the XPS Googlebook, I ended up cutting a specific section just to keep the runtime reasonable. Looking back, I kind of regret leaving it out because what hit the cutting room floor might actually be the hardware's secret weapon. Every single Googlebook ships with an application called Antigravity. A lot of people hear anything involving AI and immediately want to tune out, but stick with me here because the reality of what this tool actually does is worth paying attention to.
Google pitches Antigravity as an agentic development platform that lets anyone build in an agent first era. That sounds like typical marketing speak, but in practice, it is completely accurate. It genuinely lets you build almost any kind of lightweight app you want. You simply open the program, describe what you need, let the agent compile it, take the generated APK, install it and run it. The free tier gives you a solid amount of runway with limits that reset on a rolling 7 day cooldown, while higher plans give you massive rate limits that refresh every 5 hours.
Building Googlebook Studio to Fix a Real Problem
The default screen capture tool on the Googlebook works for basic recordings, but it left out critical features I need when producing video content. Specifically, it only records through the internal laptop microphone without supporting external mics, and it lacks any webcam overlay option. I had already built an app for the device and quickly ran into this exact limitation, realizing there was a genuine feature gap preventing me from capturing what I needed. Rather than dealing with ad-filled third-party Android apps from the Play Store, I opened Antigravity and gave it the exact specifications to solve that missing functionality.
After a couple of hours of prompt iteration, I had a working native app called Googlebook Studio. The utility captures the full screen, grabs clean audio from an external microphone and adds a floating, resizable webcam bubble that sits right in the corner. If the interface needs tweaking for a large dual-column screen layout, another prompt updates the design in about 10 minutes. I have largely moved over from Cursor to Antigravity on this machine because it handles Android build creation remarkably well, and once the remaining rough edges get ironed out, I plan on posting the installable file on my site alongside my other custom tools.
Community Utilities Built by Googlers
Google employees are already using this platform to patch functional gaps in the OS, which Mishaal Rahman recently highlighted over on Reddit. One of the standout examples is Wayfinder, an upgraded file manager designed like a proper desktop workspace. Unlike the minimal default browser, Wayfinder adds full window tabs and native network cloud storage integration, allowing direct file transfers between the laptop and a main recording PC over a local network.
Another utility gaining traction is Booklight, which is basically a clone of macOS Spotlight. It operates as a fast overlay launcher triggered via keyboard hotkeys. Just like Spotlight on a Mac, you can pull it up instantly to search apps, dig into deep system settings, fire off web queries, trigger Gemini interactions and run quick inline math problems without breaking your workflow. Along with Bento Bar, which pins system utilities cleanly across the top edge of your display, these projects demonstrate how quickly simple software gaps can get filled when users have access to direct generation tools.
Filling the Gaps in Native Software
Nobody expects these generated utilities to replace dedicated first-party engineering from major tech companies. Platform holders still need to build reliable core operating systems. At the same time, every computing platform has small feature omissions that bother specific workflows, and waiting around for an official update often takes years.
These tools are not flawless out of the gate. Mouse cursor input on custom interfaces can occasionally feel finicky, and the code sometimes requires follow-up prompts to address minor layout bugs. Yet the barrier to creating functional software has basically vanished. If you run into an annoyance on your machine, you can spend an hour or two building an exact fix, test it immediately and share it with everyone else.
