JetBrains Launches Air Preview for Developers Managing Multiple AI Agents

JetBrains has launched a public preview of Air, a new desktop tool aimed at developers who want to assign coding tasks to multiple AI agents at once, as software companies race to turn chat-based coding assistants into fuller development environments. The company announced the preview on March 9 and said Air is currently available as a free download for macOS, with Windows and Linux versions planned later.

Air is designed to orchestrate multiple coding agents within a single interface, rather than requiring developers to juggle separate terminals, editors, and browser windows. JetBrains says the tool supports Codex, Claude Agent, Gemini CLI, and its own Junie system out of the box, and can run tasks locally by default or inside Docker containers and Git worktrees for isolation and parallel work.

The Prague-based company is positioning Air as a complement to traditional integrated development environments rather than a replacement for them. In its documentation and launch post, JetBrains says Air is meant for agent-driven task execution, while developers continue to rely on their existing IDEs for the rest of the workflow.

The release reflects a broader shift in developer tooling, as vendors try to move beyond single-assistant chat panels and toward systems that can manage multiple AI-driven coding tasks concurrently. JetBrains said Air supports the Agent Client Protocol, or ACP, and plans to add broader support for agents available through the ACP Agent Registry. Cloud execution for remote runs in isolated sandboxes remains in technical preview, according to the
company.
Access to Air depends in part on how developers pay for AI services. JetBrains said the preview is available to users with a JetBrains AI Pro or AI Ultimate subscription, and developers can also bring their own API keys from OpenAI, Google, or Anthropic. The company said a separate enterprise offering is in development.

For JetBrains, whose business has long centered on IDEs such as IntelliJ IDEA, Air is an attempt to stake out a role in the fast-growing market for agentic software development without abandoning the editor-centric workflows that still dominate enterprise programming. The company’s quick-start materials describe the product as focusing on agent orchestration, a sign that JetBrains sees the next contest in developer tools not just as a model race, but as a workflow race.

Posted by John K. Waters on March 10, 2026