JetBrains ‘Agentic’ AI Agent Helps Automate Coding Tasks

Integrated Development Environment (IDE) company JetBrains has announced a new AI agent that takes a more comprehensive approach to working with software developers. The agent is called Junie and it was described to us as “a complex agentic system, built on public LLMs.” It can generate code, but it can also run inspections, write tests and even verify that the code passed the test.

“Junie is deeply integrated with JetBrains IntelliJ platform, ensuring a seamless developer experience,” Andrew Zakonov, product leader for Junie, told The New Stack. “But Junie goes far beyond a user-friendly interface: It leverages your IDE to explore project structure, search for relevant code, run tests, and perform syntax and semantic checks and other IDE tooling.”

It’s worth noting that Junie is a different offering than JetBrain’s AI Assistant, as well. Both will exist and serve different use cases, according to JetBrains.

Junie offers more than integration into the IDE, he added. Junie can also handle complex tasks while maintaining a good speed for real-time collaboration.

“To ensure high-quality results, we invest heavily in comprehensive evaluations and improvements for select languages, including Java, Kotlin, and Python, which Junie currently supports,” Zakonov said, noting that other languages would be coming soon.

AI Designed To Help With Development Tasks

This is an evolution in how JetBrains is approaching AI, but it isn’t the first time we’ve seen this shift from only generating code toward automating other developer tasks. During fall’s re:Invent, Amazon Web Services announced a similar shift in Gen AI capabilities for its Amazon Q Developer.

Some specific tasks Junie can handle are:

• Developing new product features, even if they require updates across different parts of the project;
• Fixing bugs or resolving compilation issues;
• Adding or updating documentation to keep project resources accurate and up to date;
• Adding new tests to ensure code quality and coverage; and
• Investigating and addressing problems with existing failed tests.

“This allows Junie to assist developers with various aspects of the software development lifecycle, enabling them to focus on problem-solving and high-value tasks while being more creative,” Zakonov said.

He offered a few examples of possible Junie prompts that developers can use:

• Make sure the UI follows the accessibility standard;
• Add a button to switch between dark and light themes;
• Create a NLP model to predict “Rating” from “Review Text” using data from the database;
• Use POST for logout view endpoint;
• Create a root welcoming page; and
• Activate basic membership for all members by default.

Creating Junie

Junie is powered by different configurations, including a few external large language models (LLMs), according to Zakonov.

“We do our best to make sure that we use the best possible model and that we get maximum value from the model we use,” Zakonov stated. “Junie is a complex agentic system, built on public LLMs provided by Anthropic and Open AI, and Intellij IDEs platform’s algorithms.”

The algorithms are optimized to autonomously execute coding tasks, he added.

Zakonov noted that Junie can solve 53.6% of tasks on a single run, according to SWEBench Verified, a curated benchmark of 500 developer tasks.

It raises a question, though: Does that mean that 46% of the time, the AI is not solving the task on the first try? Imagine working with a human co-worker who only performed correctly 46% of the time.

On the other hand, at least we know Junie learns and adapts.

“Junie is designed to understand the context of any given project, so it can adapt to your coding style,” Zakonov wrote in the post. “Junie can also follow specific coding guidelines, additionally enhancing its ability to align with the way you code. This results in better code quality and control on how Junie performs tasks, ensuring reliability, making Junie a trusted collaborator on your team.”

Currently, the AI agent is supported on OS X and Linux platforms. It’s currently only available through an early access program waitlist for the IDEA Ultimate and PyCharm Professional IDEs, although JetBrains plans to add WebStorm, its JavaScript and TypeScript IDE, next.

Editor’s Note: Updated Jan. 23 at. 3:30 p.m. EDT to clarify Junie is an AI agent and clarify that Junie is separate from JetBrain’s AI Assistant.