Agent Manager silently hangs when parsing repository with vscode-merge-base in .git/config

Google Antigravity
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1

Environment:

  • OS: macOS

  • IDE: Antigravity

  • Feature: Open Agent Manager / Local AI Chat

Description:
The local agent server becomes completely unresponsive during workspace initialization if the project’s .git/config contains specific custom metadata (specifically vscode-merge-base). When this occurs, the chat UI accepts user input, but the agent never generates a response. There is no loading spinner, and the failure happens silently without surfacing any error notifications to the user.
It appears the agent’s background Git parser cannot handle this metadata and hangs or crashes internally.
Steps to Reproduce:

  1. Open a workspace that contains a .git repository.

  2. Ensure the .git/config file contains a vscode-merge-base entry under a branch definition. Example:

[branch "main"]
        remote = origin
        merge = refs/heads/main
        vscode-merge-base = origin/main

  1. Open the Agent Manager chat interface.

  2. Attempt to send any prompt to the agent.

Expected Behavior:
The Agent Manager’s Git parser should safely ignore unrecognized or custom metadata in .git/config (like those injected by GitHub Pull Request extensions). If a parsing exception does occur, it should be caught and displayed in the UI as an error message, rather than causing a silent failure.
Actual Behavior:
The chat interface accepts the message, but the background process hangs indefinitely. The agent remains completely silent.
Workaround Used:
Manually deleting the vscode-merge-base lines from .git/config and executing the Developer: Reload Window command immediately restores full functionality to the Agent Manager.

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