JetBrains' new AI-first IDE JetBrains Air is now on Windows
JetBrains has released JetBrains Air, a new AI-first integrated development environment, now available for Windows. The IDE is designed to put artificial intelligence at the center of the development workflow, offering features that leverage AI to assist with coding tasks.
Background
- JetBrains is the company behind popular developer tools like IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm, and ReSharper. Its IDEs are standards in professional software development, especially for Java, Kotlin, and .NET.
- JetBrains Air is a new "AI-first" IDE — meaning it's built from the ground up around integrated AI assistance (code completion, refactoring suggestions, natural-language queries) rather than adding AI as a plug-in to a traditional editor.
- Previously only on macOS, Air's Windows launch signals JetBrains treating it as a full platform product, potentially competing with Microsoft's GitHub Copilot and Cursor (an AI-native VS Code fork).
- The shift matters because JetBrains has long resisted fully AI-driven workflows, and Air represents its bet on how developers will write code in the near future — where the IDE proactively writes or suggests code, not just highlight syntax.