JetBrains AI Assistant Lands on Visual Studio Code as an Extension

JetBrains has now made its AI Assistant available as an extension for Microsoft's popular editor, Visual Studio Code. This marks a big change for JetBrains, whose AI tools were mostly limited to its own IDEs like IntelliJ IDEA and Android Studio until now. The release comes just a few weeks after it rolled out major updates to its AI features, including a free tier for the AI Assistant in its IDEs and adding AI Pro access to its All Products Pack and dotUltimate subscriptions.

The company explained its rationale for expanding to VS Code, emphasizing a commitment to IDE-agnostic assistance:

At JetBrains, we design AI to empower developers and streamline their development process with AI-powered features integrated directly into their editor. ... In order to reach a broader developer community and demonstrate our commitment to IDE-agnostic AI assistance, we're introducing JetBrains AI Assistant for Visual Studio Code.

The VS Code extension, currently in public preview, supports languages like Java, Kotlin, JavaScript, Python, and C#. It features an AI chat capable of understanding the entire codebase for tasks like multi-file edits, and leverages JetBrains' experience in programming languages, plus its now open-source LLM, Mellum, for precise code completion, alongside models like Gemini, Claude, and various GPT versions. Interestingly, the built-in coding AI agent used in this VS Code iteration is distinct from Junie, JetBrains' other AI agent designed for planning and executing complex, multi-step coding tasks within its native IDEs. This new agent is under active development, intended to help with sophisticated tasks, though JetBrains notes its LLM quota consumption can be high during this preview. While local models are planned for the VS Code extension, they are not yet available.

Developers can try the public preview using an existing JetBrains AI subscription or get a free AI EAP license upon logging in. However, installation has a specific quirk: attempting to install from the command line using code --install-extension JetBrains.jetbrains-ai-assistant fails, citing that the extension "has no release version." Users must install it directly from the VS Code editor's marketplace, as it is a pre-release extension.

The AI Assistant provides features such as generating commit messages and inline documentation, but does not offer core language support functions like code highlighting; for those, separate language extensions are still necessary. For now, Chinese users will also have to wait due to a temporary regional limitation.