Thread

JetBrains Air: A System of Products for Agentic Software Development

75 points · 123 comments · FinnLobsien

throwaw12 · 1790077711 · focus · HN ↗
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
1. voidfunc · 1790078102 · focus · HN ↗
  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.
  1. chem83 · 1790078656 · focus · HN ↗
    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 · 1790078913 · focus · HN ↗
    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).
  2. reeredfdfdf · 1790079733 · focus · HN ↗
    [dead]
  3. pauleveritt · 1790082510 · focus · HN ↗
    JetBrainer here. Thanks for the loyalty, and I do think as one of the last independents, we are worth cheering for. But it's up to us to earn double-clicking on the IDE icon.
    After using Air in PyCharm, it's some good stuff. It's re-imagined for this hybrid world. But my question for you, honest question: do you think you still want to look at code? How about write code? If so, what are some things you'd do, if you were in charge of our IDEs?
  4. tetraodonpuffer · 1790085667 · focus · HN ↗
    same here, but this will probably be my last year, their AI strategy where it seems impossible to use it with local models without it "calling home" really soured things for me, if I wanted an always connected spying on me IDE I would use vs.code, I paid for jetbrains because I wanted to use all functionality (including AI, pointed to my llama.cpp) with networking blocked in little snitch save quick unblocks for the occasional license check if needed.
    pauleveritt · 1790088062 · focus · HN ↗
    JetBrainer here. I use OpenCode and Pi connected to local models and to stuff like hosted DeepSeek all the time. Once you have your model config set up in the agent, it works as expected.
    tetraodonpuffer · 1790088163 · focus · HN ↗
    thanks for the reply, last time I tried this in goland if you blocked the IDE from networking via little snitch/opensnitch, it did not seem to work or keep working, there seemed to be some sort of call home to enable the AI plugin / keep AI working. If this has changed I will retry and see.
    Note <a href="https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/projects/LLM/issues/LLM-17450/Provide-an-option-for-fully-offline-mode-when-working-with-local-LLMs" rel="nofollow">https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/projects/LLM/issues/LLM-17450... is still open although <a href="https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/LLM-16479/Be-able-to-activate-AI-Assistant-in-offline-mode-without-Internet-connection" rel="nofollow">https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/LLM-16479/Be-able-to-ac... appears to be closed as completed now
2. ipsod · 1790079203 · focus · HN ↗
  I use their MCP to give agents reliable refactor/rename, find usages, etc.
3. pjmlp · 1790079250 · focus · HN ↗
  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.
4. sunaurus · 1790079574 · focus · HN ↗
  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.
  1. bko · 1790081484 · focus · HN ↗
    So you're using the IDE for review? The main features you need are around simple things like reading files, tracking git changes, things like that?
    That's a small subset of the functionality you would need if you're actually authoring code. So the IDE maybe be more valuable, but the feature set you need is actually much smaller and can probably be redesigned given your narrow workflow.
    Is this accurate?
    sunaurus · 1790082501 · focus · HN ↗
    Sure, but my IDE does these simple things very well.
    Just some important things off the top of my head that I use daily:
    * Instantly jumping between definitions and usages
    * Folding and unfolding code blocks
    * Quick overview of structures in files
    * Database access, so I can browse the data and the code at the same time
    Also, sometimes I just want to quickly refactor/rename some variable across all its usages or whatever. It's just quicker to do it in the IDE with a simple keyboard shortcut, rather than prompting an agent "rename oldName to newName".
  2. pauleveritt · 1790082358 · focus · HN ↗
    JetBrainer here. I can attest that you are a primary target for Air for IDEs.
    We have put a lot of thought into how we can add value for the workflow you just described. Here's the way I think about it: FSD for a car. Can you imagine trying to sell a car without a steering wheel? I still want to code, I still want the deterministic side, even in cases where I'm letting the machine do the work.
    surgical_fire · 1790086960 · focus · HN ↗
    I wanted to try Air, as it seems to have interesting ideas for working collaboratively with LLMs.
    But the choice of AI providers was very limited, and I found no ways to add the ones I use (the only options for providers were Anthropic, OpenAI and Google).
    Any plans of opening up for more providers?
    fundamental17 · 1790088669 · focus · HN ↗
    With ACP, it allows for any provider you choose.
    surgical_fire · 1790088799 · focus · HN ↗
    Cool, I'll try this today.
    kelsolaar · 1790191821 · focus · HN ↗
    I would really like Air to be closer to an agent / terminal multiplexer like CMUX / WMUX: I would for example like to be able to basically type "claude" or "codex" to launch my harness with the CLI args I need. The fact this requires dedicated API keys from the LLM providers makes it a no go at both home and work.
  3. TYPE_FASTER · 1790083036 · focus · HN ↗
    I'd agree with this. I've been working with Claude on an app. I wanted to increase the size of one element in the UI. I could have asked Claude to do it, but I wanted to understand the application, as well as it kinda seemed like a waste of time and tokens.
  4. surgical_fire · 1790084090 · focus · HN ↗
    Likewise.
    Unless you are blindly vibe coding everything without an IDE to help navigate what is being generated to review the output, working would be hellish.
    And if you are blindly vibe coding everything, I am just glad I don't have to work with you. While LLMs mostly speed me up, they make serious mistakes often enough that a review is necessary.
5. brentroose · 1790081912 · focus · HN ↗
  I'm biased (I'm a dev advocate at JetBrains), but I also still actively write code and use PhpStorm almost daily.
  Yes, we're writing less code, but the job of "a programmer" has always been about so much more than _writing_ code. It's about code reviews, QA, debugging, discovery, and maintenance; much more than the "writing" part. Anyone with production code will agree, I think: the writing part is the easy part. That's where I still very much prefer a proper IDE over a text editor or terminal. I want easy code navigation, I want proper static analysis without relying or waiting on third party tools, I want a visual overview of changes that happened. I want to stay in charge of whatever is writing my code. On top of that, I want my agents to have access to the tools that have made me the most productive developer for years.
  Curious about your thoughts?
  1. throwaw12 · 1790083006 · focus · HN ↗
    > much more than _writing_ code. It's about code reviews, QA, debugging, discovery, and maintenance;
    Of course, but agents are also opening up new possibilities to do these jobs.
    For example, you can do quick first code review with agent, or you can ask agent to add couple of print statements and debug the code until it figures out the issue, also for discovery, you can do discovery with agents and generate nice output with the details you want (although not accurate sometimes)
    As a JetBrains user myself, whose organization cancelled the IntelliJ license recently, I can attest things I am doing inside IntelliJ is getting less and less. I am primarily using IntelliJ for code navigation at the moment, which is still the best one
  2. ipsod · 1790090766 · focus · HN ↗
    > It's about code reviews, QA, debugging, discovery, and maintenance; much more than the "writing" part.
    AI can do all of that quite well. If you take your hands off of the wheel, lean into it, start building systems for it, start figuring out where it goes wrong on your codebase and building systems to prevent that... you might get 10x more done. I do, and the results are generally better than anything I'd have coded by hand, because there was never enough time.
    I don't look at or try to grok all changes, though. I couldn't get near as much done, otherwise, and I'm not convinced that 1 hr of me looking over it is better than 4 hrs of AI looking over it, and the AI is far cheaper. I look over the code, occasionally, to look for code that's objectively terrible, but I don't fix it directly - I use it as a test-case for improving my AI stack, to make it able to find and fix or prevent that class of terrible.
    I probably spend 9 out of 10 credits on review and refinement, not writing fresh code. In spite of that, I'm still producing things way faster than I ever did by hand, with only a single $200/mo Codex plan.
    I still keep my JetBrains' subscription, so that agents can use the MCP. I probably spend <5h per month in an IDE myself, though.
6. pauleveritt · 1790082187 · focus · HN ↗
  Hi, JetBrainer here with my two cents. You're right, there's a crop of folks barely opening their IDE, who don't really even want to look at code anymore, much less type any code.
  But there's still a group that needs to own the result, who still read code and write code. Folks who still believe in developers and development. This group might not be loud in SV, but they are big out in the world.
  I'm a Python advocate at JetBrains and our team runs into folks like this all the time.
  I've been enjoying using Air inside the IDE as a way to get the acceleration without giving up coding. I get the speed side from the agent and the trust side from the deterministic IDE.
7. ffsm8 · 1790086373 · focus · HN ↗
  We just haven't had the IDE moment for agentic development yet.
  I suspect we won't for several years yet - and it's likely going to be way more integrated/specialized for specific technology than our previous ides were.
  But you're unlikely to go back once you've the full stack integrated with full observability, release pipeline, system integration tests etc pp
  Still, it needs way more integration to work well and not be DOA, hence this is still far out I think.
  1. pauleveritt · 1790087990 · focus · HN ↗
    JetBrainer here. Kind of my thoughts as well. When you think about the main problem -- human-in-the-loop -- the deterministic side has a lot to offer. But not always at the point of cursor-on-a-character.
  2. alfg · 1790422468 · focus · HN ↗
    I think this is it. It's hard to tell what the future of IDE development (if any) looks like at the pace AI is going. So everyone is building agentic workflows for a fast moving target. What will happen when the code generated is already 99.9% trustworthy and doesn't need the human-based tooling of an IDE anymore? It feels like we're almost there.
    I do think JetBrains has an advantage here with their background and reputation. I'm constantly reshaping my tools literally every month, so hopefully they build some type of staple development IDE to fit these type of workflows. I don't know what that is yet.
    AIR looks interesting, but I can't say this is the "AI IDE moment" yet.
8. unrented7977 · 1790092185 · focus · HN ↗
  I'm still really soured on JetBrains for how abysmally they handled their UI update and initial AI offerings. I was an Ultimate subscriber for over a decade and canceled last year because JetBrains decided they weren't interested in having people like me as a customer. That being a power user who values a certain level of usability and continuitiy in their tools. Fischer Price's My First IDE is not a tool I can or am willing to use professionally, and I don't see the value of a paid VSCode clone.
  Not to mention all the lies about the new UI adoption and when faced with backlash, they put the old UI into a plugin that "might" receive updates and support in the future.
  I actually did try their latest IDE a few months ago to see if their AI integration was worthwhile. There appeared to be no functional way to use a local LLM. You can set up OpenCode as a provider, but any time you click anything it resets your model to one of the free API services, with no discernable way to change the default.
  I don't have high confidence in Air. So far JetBrains has not shown they know what a good AI integration is like. Frankly I don't think they know who their customers are or what they want.
  For my part, I'm still using 2024.1 versions on my perpetual fallback license. I had Claude slap together an MCP plugin so now I have my own AI integrated IDE that actually works and functions as a usable tool. All my buttons have text labels instead of hieroglyphs and padding.

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