Developer tools company JetBrains is discontinuing its Fleet IDE, which was introduced in 2021 but never made it out of public preview. The company is focusing instead on a new agentic development environment called Air.
JetBrains has a wide range of IDEs but most are based on the same core IntelliJ platform, which runs on the JVM (Java Virtual Machine). IntelliJ IDEA was first released in 2001, nearly 25 years ago, at which time the company felt the need for a newly architected product designed from scratch to be lightweight, collaborative, and with first-class support for remote projects. JetBrains no doubt felt pressure from Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code (VS Code) which also had those qualities.
The intention at the time was to continue developing the long-established IntelliJ-based IDEs, while also offering Fleet, which the introductory post said was “built from scratch with a new architecture and user interface.”
Some developers were won over by Fleet, but most were hard to shift from the familiar IntelliJ tools. The plug-in ecosystem for IntelliJ as well as the fact that Fleet seemed to be in perpetual preview were factors in this. In February this year, a new IDE for Kotlin Multiplatform, a cross-platform development tool which was originally based on Fleet, was discontinued in favour of enhanced IntelliJ support. We noted at the time how this cast doubt on the future of Fleet itself.
Those doubts are proved well-founded. In a post this week, JetBrains said that “starting December 22, 2025, Fleet will no longer be available for download. We are now building a new product focused on agentic development.”
The reasons given were that having two IDE families created confusion and diluted the company’s focus. “We could neither replace IntelliJ IDEA with Fleet nor narrow it into a clear, differentiated niche,” said the head of IntelliJ IDEA Aleksey Stukalov and product manager Ekaterina Prigara. The two stated that Fleet had been a worthwhile experiment and that many Fleet components were now used in other JetBrains IDEs.
Fleet is not completely dead. A new agentic development product in preview, called Air, is based on the Fleet platform. Air is designed for a new kind of workflow. “The developer doesn’t write the code themselves. They guide the agent and review its output,” said Prigara and Stukalov. Air is in public preview and requires an Anthropic subscription for use. Future features will include Windows and Linux support – it is currently fully compatible with macOS – the ability to run in the browser, other agent choices including Codex, Gemini and Junie, and a cloud execution mode where Air “keeps working in the cloud” even in the absence of the developer.
Those developers who did enjoy Fleet are disappointed. “This is a wrong move. Fleet had the perspective of bringing the excellent JetBrains tooling to a VS Code (and now Zed) competitor … I’m officially divorcing JetBrains now,” said one.
There is a pattern here. Fleet was designed to compete with VS Code, whereas Air is designed to compete with a new wave of AI-based development tools, of which there are many, including AWS Kiro, Google Antigravity and Cursor. Microsoft’s VS Code has also pivoted to focus on AI. Once again, JetBrains is creating a brand new product in order to keep pace with software development trends.
Some developers though question whether a completely new tool is necessary. “I’d much rather see JetBrains build on the strengths of its powerhouse IDEs and layer those agentic features on top of what already works,” said one.
Getting developers to switch to Air may be no easier than it was to tempt them towards Fleet.