[BUG REPORT] Windows "Select where to open conversation" popup (Drive-Letter URI Mismatch)

Google Antigravity
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Google Antigravity IDE — Bug Report: Windows Drive-Letter URI Encoding Mismatch (Bug #12)

Component: workbench.desktop.main.js / Frontend URI Comparison & trajectorySummaries
Platform: Windows 10 / Windows 11
Severity: Medium-High (Usability Friction & Past Conversation Association Failure)
Reported By: Abhishek Khanra
Affected Versions: Antigravity IDE v2.0.0 through v2.1.1+

Executive Summary

On Windows, whenever a user clicks a past conversation in the Antigravity IDE, a popup dialog appears:

“Select where to open the conversation — Open in current window / Open in workspace”

Even when the user is already in the correct workspace where the conversation was created, this dialog appears every time. Furthermore, past conversations often fail to display in the workspace sidebar.

Technical Root Cause Analysis

The root cause is a drive-letter encoding mismatch between the IDE’s backend service and its frontend React/Electron components:

  1. Backend Service (jetskiAgent): Writes workspace URIs using raw unencoded drive-letter colons:

    file:///c:/Users/Username/Projects/MyProject

  2. Frontend Workbench / State: Expects percent-encoded drive-letter colons:

    file:///c%3A/Users/Username/Projects/MyProject

In workbench.desktop.main.js, the frontend performs strict JavaScript string equality (===) and array checks (.includes()) directly on these raw URI strings without normalizing drive-letter colons (c: vs c%3A):

Comparison Location 1: The Disambiguation Dialog Check

// Located in conversation handler inside workbench.desktop.main.js
if (F.length === 1 && F[0] === d.workspaceUris[0]) {
    o(_.selectedCascadeId), setTimeout(() => { r() }, 50);
    return;
}
  • Failure: F[0] is file:///c:/... and d.workspaceUris[0] is file:///c%3A/....
  • F[0] === d.workspaceUris[0] evaluates to false, causing the IDE to show the “Select where to open” popup dialog every time.

Comparison Location 2: Sidebar Workspace Filtering

// Filter past conversations for active workspace
n.workspaces.map(r => r.workspaceFolderAbsoluteUri).some(r => e.includes(r))
  • Failure: r contains raw c: while array e contains percent-encoded c%3A.
  • e.includes(r) evaluates to false, causing past conversations to disappear or fail to match the active workspace.

Comparison Location 3: State Sync Comparison

l.workspaceFolderAbsoluteUri === n.toString()
  • Failure: Mismatch between raw colon and percent-encoded string representations.

Recommended Official Fix (For Google Antigravity Engineering Team)

In the frontend workbench codebase:

  1. Use VS Code extUri Comparison: Replace raw string === comparisons with VS Code’s built-in URI comparison helper:
    this.uriIdentityService.extUri.isEqual(uriA, uriB)
  2. Normalize Backend URIs: Ensure jetskiAgent normalizes all Windows drive-letter colons to %3A before writing to trajectorySummaries or returning over RPC.

Community Workaround Script (fix_workspace_uri.py)

A standalone Python script was authored by Abhishek Khanra to fix this issue on affected Windows installations:

  1. Database Normalization: Normalizes all workspace URIs stored in state.vscdb (trajectorySummaries Protobuf blob) from file:///c:/ to file:///c%3A/.
  2. Surgical JS Patching: Wraps string comparison expressions in workbench.desktop.main.js with a lightweight normalizer helper (_aUF) that standardizes c: to c%3A prior to evaluation.
  3. Checksum Recalculation: Recalculates and updates the SHA-256 base64 checksum in product.json to prevent installation corruption warnings.
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Hi @ishekofficial,

I haven’t seen any popup window when opening the past conversations. If the issue is still persists. Could you please try updating your Antigravity IDE to the latest version (2.5.5) to see if that resolves?

To provide our developers with the necessary diagnostic data, we encourage you to use the in-app feedback tool (found via the Feedback icon in the top-right corner > Report Issue)