The Eclipse Foundation has released an alpha version of its Theia IDE with AI features, along with an AI framework to enable others to integrate AI into their tools, with the claim that its AI tools avoid vendor lock-in.

The new features add AI to the existing Theia project, which is both a platform for building tools, and an IDE based on that platform. Much of the code is based on the same components used in Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code (VS Code), though Theia’s website insists that Theia is “not a fork of VS Code;” however it uses the same Monaco editor and aims to be compatible with VS Code extensions. 

According to Eclipse executive director Mike Milinkovich, existing AI development platforms are “locking developers and tool-builders into inflexible, opaque and single vendor ecosystems.” The foundation claims that the Theia AI platform provides “full transparency and adaptability.”

Developers keen to try AI-enabled Theia should note that currently Windows is the best supported platform. The download page warns that the x86 MacOS version “might run slow and unstable,” and that the MacOS ARM build is “new and still experimental.” On Linux there is a choice between a Snap community-maintained build or an AppImage.

Those successful in installing version 1.59.1 will find an AI Features option in settings, disabled by default, and warning that “these features are in an alpha phase.” Once enabled, there are options including extensions for Anthropic, HuggingFace, LlamaFile, Ollama and OpenAI. 

Alongside the AI features, SCANOSS can be enabled, this being a service from the Madrid-based Software Transparency Foundation which scans AI-generated code for open source licensing compliance. 

The AI assistant in the Theia IDE is called Theia Coder and has capabilities including generating applications from prompts, modifying existing code subject to review. Other AI features include inline code completion, chat agent to ask questions about application structure or other development questions, and help with terminal commands. The most advanced feature is the ability to create AI agents on the fly, which according to the Foundation could automate testing, documentation, and code review.

When using Coder in the Theia IDE, there is an option to expand the function calls in the chat, showing exactly what the assistant is doing which is good both for transparency and for learning.

Theia also supports the Anthropic Model Contextual Protocol (MCP), for integrating with third-party services.  

The Eclipse Foundation was founded by IBM in 2001 and in its early days the Eclipse IDE was both popular and influential, mainly for Java development. Today it is VS Code that dominates the editor and lightweight IDE space. Eclipse still exists, but Theia is the Foundation’s modern approach to providing a vendor-neutral IDE for both desktop and cloud. Theia suffers though from lack of access to the Microsoft-operated VS Code Marketplace, using the Open VSX Registry instead.

More details on AI-powered Theia are here.