JetBrains launches Air, its system for agentic development
JetBrains announced JetBrains Air, a new umbrella system of products for agentic software development, spanning individual developers, teams and organizations, both inside and outside JetBrains IDEs. The company frames it as a shift from 26 years of focusing primarily on the single-developer IDE workbench toward building for the wider system that initiates, executes, coordinates, reviews and governs agentic work. Air brings together three parts. Air in JetBrains IDEs gives developers an environment inside the IDE to direct and orchestrate agents and verify their output using JetBrains' code intelligence. Air Teams is a new way to coordinate and automate software-delivery workflows that involve both developers and autonomous agents. Air Governance, formerly called JetBrains Central, covers organizational policy, visibility, auditability, cost management and accountability for AI-assisted and agent-driven development. Junie, JetBrains' own coding agent for professional software development, will be supported across all Air surfaces. JetBrains says the system is built around a multi-vendor principle from the outset: no single model, agent or service will suit every developer, team or task, and the company does not expect the AI-vendor market to consolidate any time soon, so it is not betting its strategy on which model provider leads the rankings in a given quarter. To connect to agents JetBrains does not build, Air relies on the Agent Client Protocol (ACP), which standardizes the link between an IDE and an agent's full harness, including its planning, logic, tools, model routing and observability; through an ACP Registry, developers can discover and run compatible third-party agents from inside JetBrains IDEs. Air Governance is meant to extend cost and visibility controls across those providers and tools as well, so organizations do not have to trade tool choice for oversight. JetBrains argues that as agents take on more of the execution, the harder problem shifts from producing code to verifying and owning it: code that is obviously wrong gets caught quickly, but code that is 'almost right', plausible but carrying a hidden bad assumption, is the more expensive failure mode, and accountability for what ships still rests with people, not agents. The post does not give release dates, pricing or a full availability timeline for Air Teams or Air Governance beyond describing some parts as already available and others as entering preview; it names no specific customers, partners or competing vendors, and gives no adoption or revenue figures. JetBrains says future products in the Air line will not be named until their scope and availability are confirmed, and that the system will later extend into mobile and remote experiences and toward workflows triggered by repository events and schedules rather than a developer opening an editor.
Key facts
- JetBrains Air unifies three products: Air in JetBrains IDEs (directing and verifying agents inside the IDE), Air Teams (coordinating developer and agent workflows), and Air Governance, formerly JetBrains Central (policy, auditability, cost control)
- Junie, JetBrains' own coding agent, will be supported across all Air surfaces, but the system is explicitly multi-vendor and does not require using JetBrains' own agent
- Third-party agents connect through the Agent Client Protocol (ACP) and an ACP Registry, letting developers run non-JetBrains agents from inside JetBrains IDEs
- JetBrains frames this as its first major expansion beyond the single-developer IDE workbench after 26 years of focusing primarily on that workbench
- No release dates, pricing or full availability timeline are given for Air Teams or Air Governance; some parts are described only as 'available today' and others as 'entering preview'
Why it matters
JetBrains is repositioning itself from an IDE maker into the coordination and governance layer sitting above coding agents, on the explicit bet that the agent and model market stays fragmented rather than consolidating around one vendor. That is a different move than shipping a single competing agent: it is JetBrains trying to become the place where cost, policy and provenance are tracked no matter which model or agent a team actually uses.
Who it affects
Individual developers using JetBrains IDEs get agent direction and verification built into the editor. Engineering teams get Air Teams for coordinating work between human developers and autonomous agents. Organizations and their engineering leadership get Air Governance for policy, auditability, cost management and accountability across whichever agents and models their teams choose, including ones JetBrains does not build.
How to use it
Air in JetBrains IDEs and Junie are described as usable now inside JetBrains IDEs. Third-party agents are reached through the Agent Client Protocol and its ACP Registry rather than through a single fixed agent. The announcement gives no pricing, no tiers and no concrete rollout dates for Air Teams or Air Governance; JetBrains says only that some capabilities are available today and others are entering preview, without specifying which.
How solid is it
This is JetBrains' own announcement of its product direction, following six months of public work on agentic development environments and JetBrains Central, which is being renamed Air Governance rather than built from scratch. The multi-vendor and ACP pieces describe real, previously introduced infrastructure rather than only a future promise, but the newer pieces, Air Teams in particular, are stated as directional without dates, so how much is shipping now versus planned is not fully spelled out in the post.
Risks and caveats
The post names no specific customers, case studies, adoption numbers or revenue figures to back the strategy, and gives no comparison to competing developer-agent platforms. JetBrains itself frames the harder problem as verifying agent-produced code that is 'almost right' rather than obviously wrong, and says accountability for what ships stays with people; how well Air Governance actually delivers that oversight across third-party agents, rather than just JetBrains' own tools, is not demonstrated in the announcement itself.
“Supporting multiple models and agents is the floor, not the ceiling.”
— JetBrains, announcing JetBrains Air