This past week, Google made some pretty hot announcements about their new asynchronous coding agent, Jules. The newly released “memory” feature allows Jules to store and recall past user interactions, preferences, nudges, and corrections. For developers that use AI assistants such as Github Copilot to be more productive during their development workflow, this is an exciting and significant advancement. By enhancing its capabilities, Google aims to position Jules as a leading solution in the increasingly competitive AI coding agent landscape.
The new memory feature allows Jules to retain user-specific preferences, resulting in more personalized and efficient interactions. Jules makes a point of alerting users when it runs into problems on certain tasks. This creates an opportunity for users to intervene and get help when they need it most. This helps keep developers incentivized and able to provide support in a timely fashion when an AI runs into trouble.
Google has developed Jules Tools and additional resources to make integrating Jules into day-to-day workflows seamless. This command-line interface allows developers to interact with the AI chatbot directly from their terminal windows. This feature is meant for “highly scoped tasks. This really empowers developers to treat Jules like a scalpel for very specific coding needs without the bother of switching contexts or tools. Until now, Jules was only available online via its website and GitHub. With the launch of Jules Tools, developers have a chance to interact with this generative AI agent like never before!
Kathy Korevec, a senior developer advocate at Google, underscored the need to fold Jules into current workflows. She stated, “We want to reduce context switching for developers as much as possible.” By allowing developers to extend the tool into their current environments, Google hopes to encourage more frequent use of Jules.
Since leaving beta in August, Jules is available now under very structured pricing tiers. The free plan lets users run up to 15 total daily tasks and 3 active tasks at the same time. These new updates are huge and super exciting…more than just looks! The result is a new stacked layout for the diff viewer, faster image uploads and the ability for Jules to read and respond to comments on pull requests.
Developers have told us they’d like to see Jules plug in to other code hosting providers. Korevec acknowledged this feedback, stating, “Users want Jules to integrate with other code hosting providers.” She further elaborated on Google’s commitment to improving the tool’s versatility: “We are looking into how we can enable that with other version control systems. We are considering solutions for users who do not wish to use a version control system. Thirdly, we want to cater to the folks who are agnostic about where their code lives.
So far, Jules has established its place primarily with software engineers and similar knowledge workers who have the most to gain from code assistance. Because of its design, Dot’s development fosters deep collaboration between users and the tool itself. Korevec noted that Jules takes the opposite approach from some more interactive, competing solutions. Once the user signs off on its strategy, Jules springs into action and takes action independently. She explained this design choice: “If something happens where it runs into an issue, or it runs into a situation where it can’t unstick itself, it will pause and ask me a question.”
While Google works on bettering Jules, the company’s already looking at ways to improve the mobile user experience. This means exploring methods to deliver in-line, native notifications too, which would help create an even more seamless interaction experience for users on-the-go.