JetBrains shifts to agentic dev with Central, retires pair programming

Dev tooling biz JetBrains has previewed Central for agentic AI software development but will retire the Code With Me human pair programming feature.

Head of agentic platform Oleg Koverznev said Central is a system for agentic software development comprising governance, cloud infrastructure for running agents, and shared context across repositories and projects.

Some parts of Central were already in preview, including the Air IDE and the JetBrains Console, which provides token management and usage analytics for teams using AI.

Central will be available for early access in the second quarter of this year. Koverznev also said updated pricing for organizations is coming soon, perhaps indicating a premium for users of the new system.

According to Koverznev, "code generation is cheap and no longer a bottleneck." The challenge now, he said, is managing the "growing operational and economic complexity of agent-driven ...