JetBrains Air: A System of Products for Agentic Software Development

FFinnLobsien about 3 hours ago 59 commentsRead Article on blog.jetbrains.com

DE version is available. Content is displayed in original English for accuracy.

⚡ Community Insights

Discussion Sentiment

74% Positive

Analyzed from 2417 words in the discussion.

Discussion (59 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

throwaw12•about 2 hours ago

I like JetBrains as a company, their pricing for individuals made a lot of sense, you buy the license and you can keep using perpetual license for that version, if you want to buy newer version, you pay slightly less than year before.

I want them to succeed, but can't see how they can win in this agentic world, where people are barely opening their IDEs, and living in agents terminal whole day and from time to time opening a PR to get a review

sunaurus•about 2 hours ago

I'm realizing I am a minority, but my IDE is becoming MORE valuable to me, not less, with LLMs.

The volume of code is only increasing. Problems that used to be solved with a few lines (or even removing lines) are now solved with changes across 10 different files.

My IDE is invaluable for me when trying to navigate this stuff. I am completely convinced that people reviewing LLM code only via PR diffs are consistently missing massive systemic issues. You *need* to review changes in context of the surrounding code.

And doing this without an IDE is just making your life harder for no reason.

voidfunc•about 2 hours ago

Agree, and I have been an Ultimate Edition license holder since like 2013.

I have opened an IDE for very very few things in the last 9 months or so. Im still renewing a license at this point mostly because I like JetBrains the company and it's not a financial burden but they are in a bad place.

chem83•about 2 hours ago

If their revenue-generating products are not doing so hot, I wonder what that means to projects such as Kotlin and Compose Multiplatform. Will they keep the lights on?

fidotron•about 2 hours ago

The whole "multiplatform" portability business has been one of the most conspicuous victims of the agent wave. Porting is now primarily a QA exercise, not a development one. (Development too, generally, is heading that way).

ipsod•about 2 hours ago

I use their MCP to give agents reliable refactor/rename, find usages, etc.

pjmlp•about 2 hours ago

We not only are opening our IDEs, the alternative are iPaaS products like Workato, Boomi, Opal, Sitecore AI, Power Platform,... which are IDEs in their own way, the revenge of 4 GLs.

joshstrange•about 2 hours ago

I’ll try this out but after over a decade as a paid JetBrains customer I’ve been looking at the door. I still love their IDE and moving around the code in it but the IDE uses way too many resources. Even with me excluding the worktrees folder it gets stuck indexing/processing when I spin up new worktrees to the point that I’ve found myself killing IDEA regularly to regain system resources. 99% of my work happens in the terminal now and JetBrains has been very slow to adapt. If I get one more “can’t checkout branch, it’s checked out in a worktree” error I’m going to lose my mind, give me an auto-heal option or something. This is how work is done, don’t make me leave your IDE to fix it myself on the cli.

I’ll try out Air but I don’t have high hopes, my current workflows work great and I’m still not sold on what Air offers even after reading this post and the page about Air.

dijit•about 2 hours ago

I tend to feel fine with IDEs using buckets of resources, after all: they are specialist tools.

But I have been using their jetbrains remote system, and you can clearly see how incredibly high the RAM usage is on both server and client.

Personally I am also looking at the door, but not because of the resource usage… but because they keep putting resources into things which aren’t their core offering and it makes me wonder if they have run out of innovation in that area.

… then again, they did recently figure out how to make development on a Windows remote work… so I can keep using my linux machine while developing Windows software, so I think that earned a lot of goodwill from me.

foresterre•about 2 hours ago

I find I still use the paid IDE's (RustRover and WebStorm), even when using LLM's for reviewing code and applying corrections. It's often just faster to do that, especially with an IDE which allows for quick non linear navigation through the files (following functions etc.). I think this is where JetBrain's IDE's excel. I can live with the high startup cost as long as it is quick afterwards.

I do feel however they have been neglecting anything non-AI for a while now. I in particular loved their auto complete, and with the new guesswork AI auto complete it's just not the same. I want deterministic behaviour from my IDE.

On the LLM side, I couldn't use the Anthropic subscription with their offerings, so I just use it from a harness outside the IDE, and switch to the IDE for review. This may not be JB's fault, but it still makes their offering useless to me.

I may be one of the few remaining but I also still program myself sometimes (I weigh it based on the task). The IDE has been pushing so much AI it has been getting in my way sometimes, and it is definitely using more resources for stuff I don't use.

I too am on the fence on whether I'll resume my subscription. Luckily for JB I dearly dislike VSCode's code navigation and interface, and would severely miss their debugging tools integration.

thomascgalvin•about 2 hours ago

IntelliJ was the perfect IDE ... two years ago maybe? Very little that has been added since improved my experience, a bunch of it gets in my way, and I'm sick of being prompted to try the latest and greatest AI integrations.

I don't think that there's a better alternative at the moment, and I get the need to pump out features to keep the revenue stream going, but I miss the slimmer versions

hypfer•about 2 hours ago

Semi-OT, but does anyone here know what exactly happened at JetBrains?

Their IDEs have been nosediving for years now in a way usually reserved to "has been acquired by private equity". But they have not been acquired by private equity as far as I can tell.

I'm writing this from my laptop, where each keypress in a .md file in WebStorm makes the fan spin up (not hyperbole).

What happened, JetBrains?

solarwinds•about 1 hour ago

Haven't you noticed how their nosediving started right around another significant event of the past few years?

Most development was done in Russia (disregard tales sold to the West about them supposedly being a Czech company, they were Czech mostly in the name, real work happened elsewhere). Exited Russia in the beginning of 2022, leaving many talented people behind: not everyone wanted or could leave because of families, obligations, personal beliefs.

Remembering where most of JB's money was coming from, can't really say they had a choice.

pauleveritt•about 1 hour ago

JetBrainer here. I can promise: not...private..equity. In my conference talks I like to brag that I get to work at the last independent: private, profitable, European. It's a cool gig.

The answer is more like the obvious one...our category is getting redefined, at hyper-speed, and all of the players are all over the map trying to sort this out.

I like what we're doing with JetBrains Air. We know what we bring to the table, who it's for, and we're doubling down on developers and development.

That said, CPU fan on Markdown is not cool. Want me to look through it with you?

hypfer•39 minutes ago

> Want me to look through it with you?

Honestly not really.

I mean I am happy that there is some kind of response, but this is just damage control.

And, frankly, you do not need me to fix that. Of that I am certain.

I'm not running any weird setups or something out of the ordinary. If you actually test your software on a normal computer (think: random thinkpad with 8th gen intel cpu), running some random boring linux distribution (think: debian) you will run into these problems.

The bad experiences all so far have been smoke-test-level issues.

Or.. well. Product strategy. Not even bugs or performance issues at all.

But, yeah, you had to say something. I understand that, given your role as "developer advocate" (as per the HN account about section). This is your job after all.

But, honestly, sticking ones head in the sand and hoping that this passes might've been the strategically more wise move.

The problems your employer has cannot be fixed by one person taking their time and looking at an individual issue some other vocal guy on the web has. I think we both know that.

I'm sorry, genuinely.

TiredOfLife•9 minutes ago

Jetbrains ides were always slow and buggy. But with best in class code understaning

rogerthis•about 1 hour ago

I'm still a happy payer, but... They started to get out of tracks with the "new UI".

The OP post feels like completely marketing department, no skin in the game. I'm afraid they are becoming Borland.

hypfer•about 1 hour ago

Follow-up question:

What else can one use?

Excluding VSCode and all those AI-first IDEs I mean. JetBrains' git features have been excellent. I have not yet seen them be reproduced anywhere, but, eventually, they will kill that classic UI plugin. :(

delbronski•about 3 hours ago

I’ve been a happy paying JetBrains customer for 10+ years. This year I decided not to renew. It’s just not worth it anymore. I don’t spend as much time as i used to in an IDE. And their AI offerings are not so great. I gave Junie a solid try, but it was always too far behind the competition. I gave Air a solid try, but it was full of bugs. I wish them the best, and I hope they can find a solid product again in this new era.

hmokiguess•about 3 hours ago

I would love to see JetBrains win, I like them as a business, though unfortunately I haven't been using their products in a long time now.

bni•about 2 hours ago

I have Ghostty with Claude open with one tab per project. Then I have IntelliJ open also with one tab per project.

I find this setup works great for actually participating in the development. To understand what is happening and keep the mental model of what the project is about. Review in progress work in IntelliJ, use the Git, Database and REST(.http files) in the IDE as the agents generate the code.

I don't see a problem with this setup is it really that uncommon? Have people stopped using TOOLS completely? That said I don't have much interest in these JetBrains AI products, at least not currently.

splix•about 1 hour ago

I've been paying customer for 15+ years, I wish I can continue using them another 15 years, but the current trend is terrible.

They had the best IDE. Now they went all into AI, trying to compete on another people's field, and the cost of that is diminishing their main product. Do they really want to compete with Anthropic? Instead of that they could improve the other sides of IDE. Even with AI I have to review the code. Especially with AI. I need tools to check the diffs, I need to refactor it, I need to run it in different ways, see how it works, and so on. That's where IntelliJ could shine, not as AI tool.

ookblah•about 2 hours ago

people need to stop trying to build the same walled gardens with these development environments. nobody has time to buy in at this point or try to grok what your specific vision of "agentic development" is.

giancarlostoro•about 3 hours ago

Is anyone using any of JetBrains AI offerings? I feel like they are burning piles of money on areas I never hear anyone talking about using. The only thing I ever used was their AI plugin, tried Junie once, but the rest just seems like noise I dont care about.

GordonS•about 2 hours ago

I use Rider and DataGrip regularly. I also use WriterCide,

DataGrip is seriously under-rated, IMO.

tedggh•about 3 hours ago

Rider was my IDE for years until they started pushing their AI tools while not letting you bring your own models. Then it seems they listened to the complaints and for a while I could use Codex but then the next update took it away. So I ran out of patience and switched to VS Code, and that was the end of JB and my dear Rider for me.

the__alchemist•about 3 hours ago

PyCharm and RustRover. It is astonishing no other IDEs have offered direct competition. I would prefer a faster/lighter alternative to my tablet, but none exists.

edit: Sorry; misread. No, and I am very confused by their diaspora of AI offerings!

darkwi11ow•about 2 hours ago

Imo vscod(ium) with pyrefly LSP is miles better than Pycharm today. Never used rust rover but rust-analyser LSP also worked great for me. Interesting which features of jetbrains IDEs do sell it for you

the__alchemist•about 2 hours ago

I don't have a good direct comparison to that, but broadly:

  - Natural treatment of multi-file projects
  - Introspection
  - Refactoring
  - Keyboard shortcuts, specific types of search etc
  - The build/run windows

Overall, it feels like JB treats the core units as languages and multi-file projects, while others, including VsCode, treat it as text files. Whenever I try something else, I look for these features, assume I'm doing something wrong, then come to an understanding that no one else does them to the same degree. For example, Zed has no concept of moving items. I don't know if VsCode does, but whenever I try that, it seems to have only superficial ability to introspect on function calls, data structures etc.

thedangler•about 2 hours ago

They need to fix how their AI Chat works. I could not for the life of me get it to edit files when using a local model with LM studio. It gave me the correct code to change. There is no Code mode when connecting to LM studio with a local model.

I couldn't find how to change the mode without it trying to use Junie, or claude etc. very frustrating.

pauleveritt•about 1 hour ago

Hi, on this, I can promise (as a daily user) that our OpenCode and Pi support are really good. And with those, it's really easy to connect to LM Studio...in fact, I did this for the DeepLearning.AI course on hybrid/local models.

thereisadiff•about 2 hours ago

I think it makes total sense for JetBrains, and a bet on multi-vendor is something that speaks sanity to me. JetBrains has never talked VC bull**t and I'm glad they are not losing their minds for AI

fidotron•about 3 hours ago

The problem all these products have is these blog posts that describe in enough detail what the patterns are, out of necessity, also provide the information for the product to be cloned into a form that is then more dynamic and malleable for use by other developers.

It's clearly existential for JetBrains, and it's revealing that the opening goes for the fear with "but it hasn’t changed what it costs to be wrong" while ignoring that this hasn't exactly been a major concern for most software people for a scarily long time, including JetBrains themselves.

TheSaifurRahman•about 2 hours ago

I think this is the future of code editors.

Two things that fell short for me:

1. No support for my Claude subscription

2. The git interface lags behind other JetBrains IDEs

neuraldenis•about 1 hour ago

Hi, product person from JetBrains here:

About point 1: We tried to make this work, but unfortunately hit a hard stop with Anthropic: their current policies do not allow us to support this integration, and we were not able to negotiate an exception :c

We still hope that we will find an agreement here

ianhawes•about 2 hours ago

Highly recommend SoloTerm, which I think this kind of tries to replicate.

the__alchemist•about 3 hours ago

I wasn't able to integrate Air into my workflow on my first attempt. I'd hoped it would unify Claude and OpenAI, but Claude doesn't let you use it unless you are on the Token plan, which IIRC only makes sense for enterprises. I did not see any immediate advantages in Air over the Codex application, but will try it again in a few months.

I still love RustRover and PyCharm! Switching to anything else would be a big downgrade.

Side note: I am confused by the various JB LLM integrations. Air, Junie, at least 1 (maybe 2 more?) the IDEas have suggested I try.

LelouBil•about 2 hours ago

There's an ACP connector that allows you to use Claude with a subscribtion.

It's not bundled with the IDEs but it's available on github

the__alchemist•about 2 hours ago

I could def go for some ACP RN.

smallerfish•about 2 hours ago

I stopped using them last year. They were too late to see the AI juggernaut coming and their attempts at responding have been underwhelming. They should have been pouring resources into Fleet from 2022 onwards to make this, but instead it's been a series of missteps. This looks like approximately the right offering, but where's the moat? It seems like just another Cursor/Antigravity.

fundamental17•25 minutes ago

It is a broader story than just the IDE integration. That's important, of course, but the post talks about agentic development across the IDE, teams, and organizations.

ragebol•about 2 hours ago

I want to like this, but not being able to plug this into eg. OpenRouter or a local agent is a bummer.

looperhacks•about 2 hours ago

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but isn't a sizeable part of the article about how Air can be used with any agent (section "The future is multi-vendor")

girvo•about 2 hours ago

It supports ACP, so you can use it with any ACP speaking harness including many that would work with local agents

dude250711•about 3 hours ago

I am unlikely to renew my ReSharper licence without at least a 75% discount:

- It sees very little investment ever since they introduced Rider.

- They give out VS Code one for free, yet the VS users are neglected.

- Touching code manually is outdated by agents anyway.

spockz•about 3 hours ago

Refactoring when you know the shortcuts and what you want to do is still significantly faster and less error prone than letting an llm do it. That is why I started semedit[0], to bring semantically editing to LLMs. I’m still working on the benchmarking harness but the first results where I get the llm to actually use the tools look promising.

[0]: https://github.com/spockz/semantic-editor

christkv•about 2 hours ago

I still pay for it but it’s getting harder to justify spending on it.

darkwi11ow•about 2 hours ago

Just yesterday tried Intellij ai assistant setup and it sucks. I mainly use Cursor but also have Codex sub, and since version 3.15 Cursor made changes that nerfed Codex experience inside IDE, so I reluctantly look for replacement that could allow me to use both from a single interface. Intellij kinda allows for that unified interface, but is very prototype-y quality, missing features from both Cursor and Codex, can not import historical conversations and their auth UX is meh. Not sure if they will be able to catch up to competition from there.

TiredOfLife•about 2 hours ago

This is like a 3rd or fourth Jetbrains product named Air

mono442•about 2 hours ago

They have to rapidly pivot into AI because their IDEs will soon no longer be needed because less and less people are writing code by hand but I don't think it will be successful.

docheinestages•about 1 hour ago

JetBrains is on track to become another Nokia.