---
type: entity
subtype: tool
title: "Gemini 3"
description: "Google's flagship LLM release, genuinely strong on abstract reasoning (a large ARC-AGI-2 jump) and especially good at frontend and design work, though its real-world edge is hard to separate from the tooling layered on top of it."
tags: [llm, model, google, benchmarks]
videos: [is-gemini-3-really-the-best-ai-ever]
created: 2026-07-21
updated: 2026-07-21
---

# Gemini 3

Gemini 3 is Google's flagship LLM release, and Cole's take on it is a deliberate refusal of the coronation reflex: "Google has just released Gemini 3... Gemini 3 is the most powerful LLM that has ever been created. Just kidding. It is not that simple" ([0:00:00](../../sources/is-gemini-3-really-the-best-ai-ever.md)). The model is real and the gains are real; the claim that a benchmark table settles which model is best is what he rejects.

Where he does credit it is on abstract reasoning rather than pattern matching: "ARC AGI 2, it is a lot more than just pattern recognition. It's giving tasks to the LLM that requires a lot of abstract reasoning. And so, yeah, Gemini 3 is legit" ([0:07:43](../../sources/is-gemini-3-really-the-best-ai-ever.md)). The caveat is that most other [benchmarks](../../concepts/coding-benchmarks.md) read like marketing, because models are trained to ace them and because coding benchmarks are LeetCode-style puzzles rather than the messy work engineers actually do. Meanwhile developer productivity has stayed roughly flat even as the capability curve appears to explode.

The sharper point is a confound: Gemini 3's felt superiority arrives bundled with tooling. Cole demos it inside [Google Antigravity](./google-antigravity.md), whose Chrome integration lets the model open a browser, navigate the site it just built, wait for rendering, and visually verify the frontend. That loop is a property of the harness, not the weights, and it is a large share of why the experience feels dramatically better at design work. He drives the point home with his own history: [Claude 3.5 Sonnet](./claude-3-5-sonnet.md), four generations old, was still crushing it for him, which suggests his productivity jump came more from his system than from any model swap.

His proposed fix is to move evaluation onto real engineering tasks: [Cline](./cline.md)'s Kleinbench uses public GitHub repos as the substrate, capturing a starting snapshot, the prompt and process, and the committed end state per task. Cline may not become the standard; the direction is the point. Treat Gemini 3 as a strong general model whose true delta you can only learn by running it in your own harness.

## Contrasts with

- [Google Gemini 2.0 Flash](./gemini.md) - The earlier Gemini line, where 2.5's long-context strength was the previous headline.
- [Gemini 3.5 Flash](./gemini-3-5-flash.md) - The cheap, fast follow-up release known for beautiful frontends.
- [Claude 3.5 Sonnet](./claude-3-5-sonnet.md) - Four generations old and still enough, Cole's evidence that tooling outweighs model version.

## Works with

- [Google Antigravity](./google-antigravity.md) - Google's agentic IDE where Gemini 3 gets autonomous Chrome-based visual verification.
- [Gemini CLI](./gemini-cli.md) - Google's terminal harness running the same model line.
- [Cline](./cline.md) - Source of Kleinbench, the real-task eval proposal aimed at claims like "best model ever".

## Related

- [Real-World Coding Benchmarks](../../concepts/coding-benchmarks.md) - Why benchmark jumps and flat developer productivity can coexist.
- [Agent Evaluation](../../concepts/agent-evaluation.md) - Scoring behavior systematically instead of trusting launch-day tables.
- [AI Coding Harness](../../concepts/ai-coding-harness.md) - The scaffolding around the model that blurs how much credit the model deserves.
- [Visual Self-Validation Loop](../../concepts/visual-self-validation.md) - The screenshot-and-fix loop the Antigravity demo shows off.
- [Model Selection](../../concepts/model-selection.md) - Choosing per task on quality, speed, and cost rather than on a leaderboard.

## Sources

- [Is Gemini 3 Really the Best AI Ever?](../../sources/is-gemini-3-really-the-best-ai-ever.md) - "[0:00:00] Google has just released Gemini 3... Gemini 3 is the most powerful LLM that has ever been created. Just kidding. It is not that simple."
- [Is Gemini 3 Really the Best AI Ever?](../../sources/is-gemini-3-really-the-best-ai-ever.md) - "[0:07:43] ARC AGI 2, it is a lot more than just pattern recognition. It's giving tasks to the LLM that requires a lot of abstract reasoning. And so, yeah, Gemini 3 is legit."
