Didn't JetBrains release JetBrains Air recently? This looks like it's basically the same basic premise, except implemented differently. What's their strategy here, are they just launching competing products?

https://www.jetbrains.com/air/

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saghm 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

They also started developing Fleet several years back and made a few alpha releases, only to shutter it before it ever was ever fully released for reasons that essentially seemed to boil down to "we want to focus on our core IDEs instead, which didn't really explain what changed. I was interested in Fleet, so at this point I can't help but be skeptical of anything new they've done since then because it's not clear to me why the same logic for discontinuing Fleet couldn't apply to pretty much anything else.

	▲	shepherdjerred 2 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Fleet was tragic. I was so excited for it but it was a perpetual WIP. I suppose they were in a tough spot regardless though. They started developing it before the AI age, so they would have to pivot either way.
	▲	usef- 20 minutes ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Many of the improvements and refreshed design were "backported" into the traditional IDEs. And fleet was made to attract the VSCode generation, who they were starting to lose new user momentum to. But VSCode is no longer the biggest threat.
	▲	Deukhoofd 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		[dead]

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crummy 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

At a guess, they are uncertain about the long term financial viability of selling their full IDEs, and development is cheap, so they are throwing up what they can to see what sticks, and will kill what doesn’t.

	▲	XorNot an hour ago \| parent [-]
		The trouble is that's doomsday anyway. When I don't use most of the features of your product, you're competing with the monthly cost of my Claude subscription for value - and that's very good at building me exactly what I want.

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smokel 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It seems that Air is a strategic product, and Thinkrail is more of an experiment.

While they are both "agentic development tools", it seems that Air is mostly concerned with managing multiple agents, whereas Thinkrail is about spec-first development.

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JumpCrisscross 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Who is naming this stuff…

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sgt 2 hours ago | parent [-]

JetBrains Air somehow makes me think of AirBrains

	▲	JumpCrisscross 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Airheads. JetBrains Thinkrail goes in a different direction. (Though a precedented one, e.g. Ruby on Rails.)