Junie by JetBrains

Junie by JetBrains is a developer tool. Junie is JetBrains' model-agnostic coding agent for the terminal. It offers plan-first workflows, live steering, real debugger use, subagents and MCP, with a free Junie Lite tier, bring-your-own-key billing and paid AI plans.

Junie is an AI coding agent from JetBrains that runs from the command line and is built on the engine behind the company's IDEs. It is model-agnostic: users bring their own API key, with more than ten models supported, or run models locally. The homepage lists current options from Anthropic, Google, OpenAI and xAI. Because JetBrains passes provider rates through with no markup, cost control is the central pitch, helped by a free tier called Junie Lite that is tied to a JetBrains account. The workflow centers on keeping the developer in charge. Plan Mode writes requirements, design and delivery stages into editable files under .junie/plans before any code changes, and the plan can be drafted by a strong model and carried out by a faster, cheaper one. Live Prompting allows redirection in the middle of a task, and a human-in-the-loop layer asks for approval of key actions, with an allowlist that grows as the user confirms commands. Long jobs such as framework upgrades or migrations can be started from a laptop and monitored later through a web app. Debugging is a notable differentiator. Instead of only reading logs, the agent can launch a real debugger, set breakpoints, inspect runtime state and step through code, including inside class files and JARs on the JVM. Teams can also encode coding standards as persistent guidelines and Agent Skills, delegate subtasks to parallel subagents, and attach databases or APIs through Model Context Protocol servers. Junie suits professional developers and teams, especially those in the JetBrains ecosystem or on JVM stacks, who want an agent they can inspect and steer rather than a black box. It works with the terminal, GitHub, GitLab and JetBrains Air in IDEs, and the company says switching from other agents takes seconds. Against editor-based assistants and other terminal agents, its distinguishing points are IDE-grade code intelligence, model freedom and plan-first control. JetBrains also cites SOC 2 certification for organizations with compliance requirements.