Here is the summary of my findings in my end which is the conclusion of diagnosing the problem combined with creating worktrees instead of local in the workspaces.
*Note that this report is generated by claude but confirmed by me.
After spending considerable time diagnosing this on Windows, I want to share evidence that this __store crash appears to be a shipped packaging bug in the bundled Antigravity built-in extension itself, not an extension conflict or local-state issue.
Environment: Antigravity 1.23.2 on Windows 11, VSCode OSS 1.107.0, git 2.49.0
Symptoms:
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TypeError: Cannot read properties of null (reading '__store') when clicking a workspace entry in Settings → Workspaces
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Top menu (File / Edit / View) items unresponsive
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Agent Manager window broken
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New conversations auto-convert to “worktree”; errors when trying to remove them
Finding (I don’t see this elsewhere in the thread):
The bundled google.antigravity 0.2.0 extension declares three menu items that point to commands which don’t exist in its commands section. Visible in editor DevTools console at every cold start:
ERR [google.antigravity]: Menu item references a command `antigravity.importAntigravitySettings` which is not defined in the 'commands' section.
ERR [google.antigravity]: Menu item references a command `antigravity.importAntigravityExtensions` which is not defined in the 'commands' section.
ERR [google.antigravity]: Menu item references a command `antigravity.prioritized.chat.open` which is not defined in the 'commands' section.
This is shipped inside the 1.23.2 binary — present in the Running Extensions view even when launched with --disable-extensions. End users cannot fix this. The first two commands very likely correspond to the broken top-menu “import” items.
Related main.log error (deterministic on every cold start):
[uncaught exception in main]: Error: Expected lock to be held for topic uss-artifactReview
Fires 7+ times in the first ~10ms of startup, before any user action. artifactReview is the artifact-review feature; this looks like a violated lock contract on the user state store. Plausibly the root cause of the downstream __store null reference — when the store fails to initialize, subsequent accesses return null and the Settings UI crashes.
To save others repeating dead-end fixes, I systematically ruled out:
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Extensions — Tested with --disable-extensions. Confirmed only built-ins active via Show Running Extensions. Bug persists.
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Local state corruption — Renamed blob_storage, Local Storage, Session Storage, Cache aside. Identical bug on clean state.
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Fresh user-data-dir — Launched with --user-data-dir pointing at a new temp folder. Wizard appeared (truly fresh state). After sign-in cloud-sync repopulated workspaces; bug returned identically. The crash is workspace-agnostic.
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WorktreeConfig bug (the most-recommended fix in related threads) — Verified for every path in my storage.json and every .git directory on disk. Zero user repos have worktreeConfig=true (only .codex\vendor_imports\skills, which is OpenAI Codex’s internal cache, not an Antigravity workspace).
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Workspace mismatch — Same crash on every workspace including freshly-created empty folders.
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Reinstall / AppData wipe — Performed multiple times. Bug returns on first launch.
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Downgrade to 1.19.6 — Installs cleanly, fixes the menu issue but is blocked by Google’s backend (“This version of Antigravity is no longer supported”), so it’s not a viable workaround anymore.
Useful pointers for the fix:
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Crash is deterministic, not intermittent
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Crash code path is the Settings → Workspaces panel
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The Expected lock to be held for topic uss-artifactReview error in main.log fires before any user input — fix should focus on the artifact-review store’s initialization lock contract
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The three missing antigravity.* commands in the built-in extension’s menu contributions need to either be defined or removed