JetBrains Bets Everything on Agentic AI, Retires ‘Code With Me’ Tool
- What: JetBrains reportedly previewed "Central," a management system for agentic AI development.
- The Pivot: The company is retiring its "Code With Me" human pair programming feature to focus on AI.
- Timeline: JetBrains Central is scheduled for Early Access in Q2 2026; "Code With Me" support ends in version 2026.1.
- Why: Company leadership claims code generation is no longer a bottleneck, shifting the focus to managing AI agent complexity.
JetBrains, the developer tooling giant behind IntelliJ IDEA and PyCharm, is reportedly making a definitive pivot toward "agentic" software development with the preview of a new platform called JetBrains Central. Announced as a system to orchestrate AI agents, the shift comes at a significant cost to human-centric features: the company has confirmed it will sunset "Code With Me," its popular remote pair programming tool.
According to company reports and early previews, JetBrains Central is designed to address the growing operational challenges of AI-driven workflows. The platform reportedly provides governance, cloud infrastructure for running agents, and shared context across repositories. By prioritizing agentic development, JetBrains aims to position itself as a central hub for the next era of software engineering, where AI agents—rather than just human developers—perform the bulk of coding tasks.
The Architecture of JetBrains Central
JetBrains Central reportedly functions as an "open system" and control layer for agentic workflows. It integrates with existing tools like the "Air" agentic development environment and the JetBrains Console, the latter of which provides token management and usage analytics for teams. According to Oleg Koverznev, JetBrains’ Head of Agentic Platform, the goal is to provide a unified infrastructure that can handle the "growing operational and economic complexity of agent-driven work."
The platform is designed to manage "shared context," allowing AI agents to understand the nuances of specific projects and repositories. Koverznev reportedly stated that "code generation is cheap and no longer a bottleneck," suggesting that the industry's primary hurdle has shifted from writing code to orchestrating the vast number of AI agents now capable of generating it.
Recent data from a JetBrains survey of 11,000 developers supports this direction: 90 percent of respondents reportedly use AI, 22 percent already utilize AI coding agents, and 66 percent plan to adopt agents within the next 12 months.
Sunsetting Human Collaboration: The End of ‘Code With Me’
To make room for its agentic future, JetBrains is reportedly phasing out "Code With Me," a feature that peaked in popularity during the pandemic. Marketing lead Ekaterina Ryabukha reportedly confirmed that version 2026.1 will be the last IDE release to officially support the feature. While "Code With Me" will remain available as a separate plugin until the first quarter of 2027, the company plans to shut down the public relay infrastructure at that time, effectively ending its functionality for most users.
The decision has met with immediate pushback from some segments of the developer community. While Ryabukha noted that demand has declined, some small teams and educational users described the tool as "essential" for their workflows. One developer reportedly remarked that the tool's value was not in how often it was used, but in the "scale and difficulty of the problems it solves," such as onboarding new developers or debugging complex issues in real-time.
This shift follows reports that JetBrains has also deprioritized Fleet, its lightweight IDE, in favor of focusing resources on AI-centric products like Central and the Junie LLM-agnostic coding agent.
Impact on the Development Landscape
For developers and organizations, the launch of JetBrains Central signals a transition from "AI-assisted" coding to "AI-managed" development. The focus is no longer on providing a better text editor for humans, but on building a robust environment where AI agents can operate autonomously.
For the industry, this represents a major power shift. JetBrains is moving to compete with a new wave of startups and major cloud providers offering agent orchestration. The move suggests that the future of the IDE may not be an editor at all, but a management console for a fleet of digital workers.
"The challenge now is managing the growing operational and economic complexity of agent-driven work."
What’s Next for JetBrains
JetBrains Central is reportedly slated to enter its Early Access Program (EAP) in Q2 2026, targeting a limited group of design partners. Organizations interested in the platform can expect updated pricing models soon, which Koverznev hinted may include premiums for the advanced management and governance features Central provides.
As the company transitions toward version 2026.1, users of "Code With Me" are encouraged to prepare for the migration to the plugin version before the final infrastructure shutdown in 2027. Meanwhile, the industry will be watching to see if JetBrains can successfully maintain its loyal core customer base while aggressively pursuing a future where AI agents take the lead.
Sources
All technical specifications, pricing, and benchmark data in this article are sourced directly from official announcements. Competitor comparisons use publicly available data at time of publication. We update our coverage as new information becomes available.