Agentic Development: The Four Parts of a Delegation Loop
Agentic development turns AI assistance into delegated work: a harness runs the agents, skills supply domain knowledge, a sandbox bounds execution, and evals verify the result.
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JetbrainsDominique RolinkAnnouncement
A New Agentic Experience: JetBrains Air in IDEs – EAP Now Open
Summary
JetBrains launched the Early Access Program for Air, an agentic experience in its IDEs available as a plugin or in 2026.3 EAP builds. Air orchestrates multiple AI agents in parallel, moving beyond the traditional AI chat model that JetBrains found insufficient for concurrent tasks. It acts as a conduit for existing agents like Codex, GitHub Copilot, Junie, and Claude, requiring no JetBrains AI subscription. The agentic-first UX organizes work into sessions with cost visibility, temporary worktrees, and local or cloud runs, with free Junie Lite for everyday tasks. Air ships with no agents installed, detects agents on the machine, and sends data directly to the user’s provider, while AI Assistant remains available as a separate plugin.
Context
JetBrains observed that orchestrating multiple agents in parallel is fundamentally different from conversational AI chat. Their existing AI Assistant was not designed for this workflow, leading to the creation of Air as a dedicated agentic development platform within the IDE.
Approach / What changed
JetBrains Air is an open system that brings agentic development into the IDE without locking users into a specific agent. It works as a plugin that detects and connects existing agents (Codex, GitHub Copilot, Junie, Claude, etc.) via ACP. It provides an agentic-first UX with parallel sessions, cost tracking, temporary worktrees, and cloud run capabilities. Users can bring their own AI subscriptions or use JetBrains AI, and data goes directly to the provider.
Takeaways
Air is designed for parallel agent orchestration, not one-at-a-time chat, with sessions, cost visibility, and temporary worktrees.
Air supports existing agents like Codex, GitHub Copilot, Junie, and Claude, and does not require a JetBrains AI subscription.
Air ships with no agents installed and sends data directly to the user’s provider, not to JetBrains, and can be disabled via plugin.
FAQ
What is going to happen to AI Assistant?
AI Assistant will remain available and supported as a separate plugin you can install from the marketplace. Air is the future of agentic development, but AI Assistant is not being removed.
Which agents and models are supported?
Air supports Codex, Gemini, GitHub Copilot, Claude Agent, and Junie out of the box, and many others can be connected via ACP. You can use your own third-party subscriptions or JetBrains AI.
Can I use my Claude subscription?
Yes, you can use your Claude subscription in Air's terminal surface which opens as a full-screen IDE tab.
Source and freshness
- Source
- blog.jetbrains.com
- Published
- Added to Yomu
Summaries are generated from the original by a language model. Check the original before relying on it.
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