AI Assistant Comes to Kotlin Developers in Android Studio

Kotlin developers can now enhance their workflows in Android Studio with the new JetBrains AI Assistant plugin, which is now available in Beta.

This plugin offers AI-powered coding assistance, including code suggestions, AI-driven explanations, refactorings, commit message generation, and more – all within Android Studio. Backed by large language models (LLMs) from both JetBrains and third parties, it helps you write better code, faster.

How to get started

To enable AI Assistant, open Android Studio Meerkat 2024.3.1, navigate to Plugins, search for JetBrains AI Assistant, and install the plugin.

A smarter way to code in Android Studio

JetBrains AI Assistant brings context-aware AI directly into Android Studio, enhancing Kotlin development and allowing you to focus on building innovative applications. 

Automate tedious tasks and boost productivity 

AI Assistant speeds up development with intelligent code suggestions. Powered by Mellum, JetBrains’ advanced AI model, it offers code completion that understands context, suggests relevant code, and reduces manual typing. Additionally, AI Assistant streamlines tasks such as writing tests, resolving version control conflicts, generating commit messages, and documenting code.

Customize the AI to fit your workflow 

Take control of how AI integrates into your development process. Choose from cloud-based or local AI models, choose when to accept suggestions, and adjust prompts in the prompt library.

Get AI assistance, even offline

You can connect local models via LM Studio or Ollama, which means you can interact with AI Assistant for explanations, refactoring suggestions, and any coding questions, without needing an internet connection. 

See JetBrains AI Assistant in action

Let’s take a look at how AI Assistant works in the JetSnack demo project, an example app for ordering snacks.

Coding faster with code suggestions

The app currently lacks content descriptions for snack images, which are needed so screen readers can interpret them. AI Assistant’s code completion helps us modify the Snack data structure, suggesting a property for storing content descriptions. It even autocompletes entire blocks of code as we type.

Expanding features with code generation

While we were browsing the JetSnack app’s code, we noticed that it lacks a category for

healthy options. Using AI Assistant’s Generate Code shortcut, we can add this feature by simply writing a prompt in natural language.

Generating commit messages

After making these improvements, it’s time to commit our changes. AI Assistant can generate a concise and informative commit message, summarizing the updates in a way that’s clear and easy to understand.

We value your feedback!

We’re eager to hear how AI Assistant improves your development experience. You can share feedback directly from the plugin by clicking Share feedback in the AI Assistant tool window, and you can report any bugs via YouTrack. Thank you!