A02: Terminal Cheat Sheet + Install Antigravity

You have a terminal (A01). You do not need to master it, you need a handful of commands and the confidence to look up the rest. Here is your cheat sheet, then we install the AI and start talking to it.

Terminal Cheat Sheet

Keep this nearby. It is 90% of what you will use.

Command	What it does
`pwd`	Where am I? Prints the current folder
`ls`	What is here? Lists files and folders
`cd name`	Go into a folder
`cd ..`	Go back up one folder
`cd ~`	Go to your home folder
`nano file`	Open a file to edit (Ctrl+O saves, Ctrl+X exits)
Tab	Autocomplete a name (less typing, fewer typos)
Up arrow	Repeat your last command
Ctrl+C	Cancel a stuck command

A path is an address: ~/projects/notes.txt is "notes.txt, inside projects, inside home." That is all you need to start. Look up the rest when you hit it.

To edit a file in the terminal, run nano notes.txt, change it, then save and exit with the shortcuts above. Or let the AI do it, ask agy to create or change a file for you. On Windows, if you would rather point and click, run explorer.exe . to open the current folder, or make a Desktop shortcut to \\wsl.localhost\<distro>\home\<you> and edit there in any text editor.

Want the full tour? See Terminal Basics.

Install & Log In to Antigravity CLI

Antigravity ships as a single command, agy. Install it with the official one-liner (one line, straight from Google's own site, so you get the current version):

curl -fsSL https://antigravity.google/cli/install.sh | bash

Close and reopen the terminal, then check it landed:

agy --version

Now start it:

agy

The first run asks how to sign in, choose Login with Google. Your browser opens; pick your account and approve. Back in the terminal, you are in. This is the free tier: no credit card, no API key. The limits are tighter than the paid plans, but plenty to learn on. (Later you can run agy non-interactively inside scripts, see A07. Ignore that for now.)

flowchart LR A[Run agy] --> B[Login with Google] B --> C[Approve in browser] C --> D[Chatting in your terminal]

Your First Conversation

Type a question in plain English, press Enter, read the answer. It remembers the conversation, so you can follow up. Controls you will use constantly:

/help lists commands.
/quit leaves (or Ctrl+C twice).
Up arrow brings back your last message.

Type, read, verify, repeat. The verifying is the part people skip, A01 told you why not to.

This Week's Exercise

Install the Antigravity CLI and log in with Google.
Ask five real questions you actually care about this week.
Verify one answer against a real source and find one thing it got wrong or made up. Write down how you caught it.

Key Takeaways

You only need a handful of terminal commands; look up the rest as needed
Install the Antigravity CLI with one command, then confirm it with agy --version
Log in with Google: free tier, no credit card, no API key
The loop is simple: type, read, verify, repeat