GitHub Copilot App vs JetBrains Air: A Java Dev Compares Agentic IDEs
A Java developer with a long history of using IntelliJ tested two AI-first IDEs — GitHub Copilot App and JetBrains Air — to evaluate their agentic coding capabilities. The GitHub Copilot App impressed by autonomously resolving a Java toolchain certificate error and opening Swagger docs directly within the IDE, reducing manual setup steps. However, its use of git worktrees made it difficult to manually browse or edit the codebase alongside the tool, forcing the developer to keep IntelliJ open separately. JetBrains Air, a new offering from the makers of IntelliJ, places the AI prompt front and center with a familiar interface and supports multiple AI providers including Claude and Gemini. The developer found Air's cleaner UI appealing, though the full comparison between the two tools was still underway at the time of writing.
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