JetBrains, a developer tools publisher, unveiled in early September 2026 JetBrains Air, an open product system aimed at developers, teams, and organizations. The company, headquartered in Amsterdam, is thus expanding its activity beyond the individual workspace to cover AI agent-driven development.
- JetBrains a dévoilé JetBrains Air en septembre 2026, un système ouvert pour le développement par agents IA.
- Le système regroupe Air in JetBrains IDEs, Air Teams et Air Governance, et prend en charge l’agent Junie.
- Les développeurs adoptent les agents plus vite que les organisations ne mettent en place l’infrastructure nécessaire.
- Vérifier le code des agents coûte désormais plus cher que le générer, et la responsabilité reste humaine.
JetBrains is known for its integrated development environments (IDEs), such as IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm, WebStorm, and CLion, as well as for the Kotlin language, created in 2011. In 2026, the company began publicly experimenting with agent-based development environments, then introduced JetBrains Central, an open control and execution system for agent-driven development. These efforts have been consolidated within JetBrains Air.
The system includes several products. Air in JetBrains IDEs allows directing agents and verifying their work within the company’s IDEs. Air Teams is designed to coordinate and automate software delivery workflows involving developers and autonomous agents, that is, AI programs capable of performing tasks without constant intervention. Air Governance, formerly JetBrains Central, addresses visibility, auditability, cost management, and accountability. JetBrains’ programming agent, Junie, will be supported across all Air surfaces.
The system is also intended to remain open to tools chosen by developers, including those not designed by JetBrains. The Agent Client Protocol (ACP) standardizes the connection between an IDE and all elements surrounding an agent, such as its scheduling, logic, tools, or model routing. Thanks to its registry, developers can discover and run an increasing number of compatible agents.
Faster adoption than organization
According to JetBrains, developers have adopted agents faster than organizations have been able to implement the necessary infrastructure. While agents already provide concrete value to many developers, their profitability remains harder to demonstrate at the organizational level, as costs appear in code review, corrections, security, infrastructure, and expenses.
The company also emphasizes that the bottleneck is shifting. The code produced by agents is, according to them, “less costly to generate, but more costly to verify.” The risk focuses on nearly correct code, which may contain a wrong assumption or architectural inconsistency that only appears at a stage where correction is expensive. JetBrains reminds that while work can be delegated, responsibility cannot: it remains with the people and organizations delivering the software.
A multi-vendor choice
Support for multiple vendors is, according to the company, a fundamental design principle of JetBrains Air. “We do not believe this market will consolidate anytime soon,” states the JetBrains team, adding: “Models each have their strengths and rankings evolve month by month.” For the company, multiplying tools reduces visibility on development work because context is not transmitted from one tool to another.
JetBrains also indicates that it is developing its own agent, while specifying that “JetBrains Air does not require clients to use it.” It highlights its 26 years of software engineering experience, which it describes as a foundation allowing agents to better understand the structure of existing code rather than generate more of it.
Looking ahead, JetBrains announces that the system will extend to mobile and remote experiences, and that an increasing share of work will be triggered by repository events, scheduling, and delivery processes. The company specifies that it will not mention future products before their scope and availability are confirmed, and that it will explain with each release what works and what remains in development.
