The Elephant-Goldfish Model: scaling design-driven AI development

Google has open-sourced, under Apache 2.0, an Elephant-Goldfish Model plugin that pairs a context-rich "Elephant" design session (no code written) with stateless "Goldfish" sessions that validate specs through comprehension checks, antagonistic review, and a go/no-go readiness check. The plugin, originally built internally and used daily by thousands of Googlers, automates the EGM lifecycle in Antigravity, with other environments upcoming. The authors argue that "design is the new code" and that human judgment remains the key artifact in AI-assisted development.