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Jules: An asynchronous coding agent
- gtirloni 1y ago> Jules does coding tasks you don't want to do. proceeds to list ALL coding tasks.
- breakingwalls 1y agoWow, it looks like Google and Microsoft timed their announcements for the same day, or perhaps one of them rushed their launch because the other company announced sooner than expected. These are exciting times! https://github.blog/changelog/2025-05-19-github-copilot-coding-agent-in-public-preview/ https://github.blog/changelog/2025-05-19-github-copilot-codi...
- candiddevmike 1y agoGoogle IO is this week, same as Microsoft Build. Battle of the attention grabbing announcements.
- breakingwalls 1y agoWe have to see what Google has in store, probably better models, AI integrations with Android Studio and may be bring glasses back?
- -__---____-ZXyw 1y agoYes, the masses are practically heaving with excitement, indeed
- caleblloyd 1y agoBoth announcements on the heels of OpenAI Codex Research Preview too, which is essentially the same product
- cess11 1y agoAll the monies on the same idea at the same time, sounds a bit desperate to me.
- thorum 1y agoGoogle’s ability to offer inference for free is a massive competitive advantage vs everyone else: > Is Jules free of charge? > Yes, for now, Jules is free of charge. Jules is in beta and available without payment while we learn from usage. In the future, we expect to introduce pricing, but our focus right now is improving the developer experience. https://jules-documentation.web.app/faq https://jules-documentation.web.app/faq
- candiddevmike 1y agoYou're the product here, though. EDIT: legal link doesn't work here (https://jules-documentation.web.app/faq#does-jules-train-on-private-repos https://jules-documentation.web.app/faq#does-jules-train-on-...) > No. Jules does not train on private repository content. Privacy is a core principle for Jules, and we do not use your private repositories to train models. Learn more about how your data is used to improve Jules. It's hard to tell what the data collection will be, but it's most likely similar to Gemini where your conversation can become part of the training data. Unclear if that includes context like the repository contents. https://jules.google.com/legal https://jules.google.com/legal
- add-sub-mul-div 1y agoThey're going to make so much money when nobody knows how to code or think anymore without the crutch.
- falcor84 1y agoI'll just put this here: > And so it is that you by reason of your tender regard for the writing that is your offspring have declared the very opposite of its true effect. If men learn this, it will implant forgetfulness in their souls. They will cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks. > What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but for reminder. And it is no true wisdom that you offer your disciples, but only the semblance of wisdom, for by telling them of many things without teaching them you will make them seem to know much while for the most part they know nothing. And as men filled not with wisdom but with the conceit of wisdom they will be a burden to their fellows. - Plato quoting Socrates in "Phaedrus", circa 370 BCE
- kcatskcolbdi 1y ago> Thanks for your interest in Jules. We'll email you when Jules is available. Well here's to hoping it's better than Cursor. I doubt it considering my experiences with Gemini have been awful, but I'm willing to give it a shot!
- kylecazar 1y agoOh, I got an email invitation to try it out this morning... This post reminded me to give it a go. I don't remember asking for an invitation -- not sure how I got on a list.
- fish_n_chips 1y agolooks like it a little too popular or they haven't figured out how to scale compute: Jules encountered an unexpected error. To continue, respond to Jules below or start a new task. And appears you have limited to 5 tasks per day
- xianshou 1y agoBoth Google and Microsoft have sensibly decided to focus on low-level, junior automation first rather than bespoke end-to-end systems. Not exactly breadth over depth, but rather reliability over capability. Several benefits from the agent development perspective: - Less access required means lower risk of disaster - Structured tasks mean more data for better RL - Low stakes mean improvements in task- and process-level reliability, which is a prerequisite for meaningful end-to-end results on senior-level assignments - Even junior-level tasks require getting interface and integration right, which is also required for a scalable data and training pipeline Seems like we're finally getting to the deployment stage of agentic coding, which means a blessed relief from the pontification that inevitably results from a visible outline without a concrete product.
- _pdp_ 1y agoThe copy though: "Spend your time doing what you want to do!" followed by images of play video games (I presume), ride a bicycle, read a book, and play table tennis. I am cool with all of that but it feels like they're suggesting that coding is a chore to be avoided, rather than a creative and enjoyable activity.
- beatboxrevival 1y agoI think they are suggesting that you can focus on the code that you want to write - whatever that is. Especially since the first line is, "Jules does coding tasks you don't want to do." I took the first image as being someone working on the computer. Or, take back your time doing whatever you want - e.g. cycling, table tennis, etc.
- spacechild1 1y ago> Or, take back your time doing whatever you want - e.g. cycling, table tennis, etc. That might be true for hobbyists or side projects, but employees definitely won't get to work less (or earn more). All the financial value of increased productiveness goes to the companies. That's the nature of capitalism.
- beatboxrevival 1y agoI don't think it's meant to be literal, more tongue-in-cheek. Obviously, developers aren't going to be playing table tennis while they wait for their task to finish. Since it's async, you can do other things. For most developers, that's just going to mean another task.
- antihipocrat 1y agoAll of the work that currently gets pushed back with 'no capacity maybe in Q+2' will become viable and any brief moment of spare capacity will immediately be filled. A new backlog will start to fill up and the cycle repeats.
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- azhenley 1y agoSo many agent tools now. What is the special sauce of each?
- airstrike 1y agoSpoiler alert: there isn't one
- meta_ai_x 1y agoGemini has 1 Million context window, which usually works better for coding. When it gets priced, it's usually cheaper (for the same capability)
- otabdeveloper4 1y agoThe whole "industry" right now is hacked together crap shoved out the door with zero thinking involved. Wait a year or two, evaluating this stuff at the peak of the hype cycle is pointless.
- turnsout 1y agoThese coding agents are coming out so fast I literally don't have time to compare them to each other. They all look great, but keeping up with this would be its own full time job. Maybe that's the next agent.
- mountainriver 1y agoAny coding solution that doesn’t offer the ability to edit the code in an IDE is nonsense. Why would I ever want this over cursor? The sync thing is kinda cool but I basically already do this with cursor
- diggan 1y agoHeh, personally I'd say any coding solution that lives inside an IDE is nonsense :P Funny how perspectives can be so different. I want something standalone, that I can use in in a pane to the left/right of my already opened nvim instance, or even further away than that. Gave Cursor a try some weeks ago but seems worse than Aider even, and having an entire editor just for some LLM edits/pair programming seems way overkill and unnecessary.
- ryandrake 1y agoIdeally, it would be built in to [my IDE of choice]. So I neither have to have a separate browser window open, copy/pasting, or have a separate IDE open, copy/pasting. Having it as a standalone tool makes as much sense as having a spell checker that is a separate browser window running a separate app from the word processor you are using to write your letter. Why?
- mock-possum 1y agoCan you have it make changes, then review them in a gif diff? That’s basically all I do with cursor at this point
- Wowfunhappy 1y agoI really want to try out Google's new Gemini 2.5 Pro model that everyone says is so great at coding. However, the fact that Jules runs in cloud-based VMs instead of on my local machine makes it much less useful to me than Claude Code, even if the model was better. The projects I work on have lots of bespoke build scripts and other stuff that is specific to my machine and environment. Making that work in Google's cloud VM would be a significant undertaking in itself.
- dcre 1y agoYou can use Aider with Gemini. All you need is an API key. https://aider.chat/docs/leaderboards/ https://aider.chat/docs/leaderboards/
- 85392_school 1y ago> Also, you can get caught up fast. Jules creates an audio summary of the changes. This is an unusual angle. Of course Google can do this because they have the tech behind NotebookLM, but I'm not sure what the value of telling you how your prompt was implemented is.
- manmal 1y agoI guess the idea is vibe coding while laying in bed or driving? If my kids are any indication of the generation to come, they sure love audio over reading.
- sandspar 1y agoIn a handful of years you'll have the voice/video generation come of age. Also we may have some new form factor like AI necklaces or glasses or something.
- graeme 1y agoOne benefit is you can, say, go for a walk and get a report and act on it as you go. More of a tool for managers, or least it's a manager style tool. You could get a morning report while heading to the office for example. (I'm not saying anyone reading this should want this, only that it fits a use case for many people)
- Taniwha 1y ago"Spend your time doing what you want to do!" - I enjoy coding cool new code ....
- beatboxrevival 1y agoI think that's the point AI agents are trying to sell. Spend more time on the type of coding tasks you want to do, like coding cool new code, and not the tasks that you don't want to do.
- cess11 1y agoIs this really a common problem? What are these tasks that can't be deterministically automated and also not avoided entirely, and also don't fit nicely into where you need to think about some other task for a while before you go implement a solution to it?
- bionhoward 1y ago[flagged]
- alphabetting 1y agohttps://jules.google/docs/faq/#does-jules-train-on-private-repos https://jules.google/docs/faq/#does-jules-train-on-private-r...
- bitpush 1y ago[flagged]
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- lofaszvanitt 1y agoAnd the logo is an octopus? Heh, nice connotations. Now I'm gonna trust my data with this for sure :DD.
- 111111101101 1y agoI was interested. Clicked the try button and just another wait list. When will Google learn that the method that worked so well with Gmail doesn't work any more. There are so many shiny toys to play with now, I will have forgotten about this tomorrow.
- ldjkfkdsjnv 1y agoThey had to release something, openai is moving at blazing speed
- -__---____-ZXyw 1y agoSounds like a meme. I just can't take the phrase "blazing speed" seriously anymore. Is this intended humorously? Or is it just me
- jsemrau 1y agoIt's success theater. You need to show progress otherwise you might be perceived falling behind. In times where LoI's are written and partnerships are forged the promise has more value than the fact.
- ldjkfkdsjnv 1y agoyou arent paying attention? google is getting smoked by teams of 25 at openai
- archargelod 1y agoAnymore? For me it always sounded too childish or sarcastic. I would expect to see "Blazingly Fast" on a box of Hot Wheels or Nerf Blaster, not a serious tech product.
- -__---____-ZXyw 1y agoTrue. It would look like the real deal of a box of Hot Wheels too
- joejoo 1y ago[dead]
- CobrastanJorji 1y agoIs the "asynchronous" bit important? How long does it take to do its thing? My normal development workflow of ticket -> assignment -> review -> feedback -> more feedback -> approval -> merging is asynchronous, but it'd be better synchronous. It's only asynchronous because the people I'm assigning the work to don't complete the work in seconds.
- ukuina 1y agoOther Agentic tools run for 10-30min based on model, task complexity and the number of dead ends the LLM get into.
- modeless 1y agoCan it resolve merge conflicts for me? My least favorite programming task and one I haven't seen automated yet.
- mock-possum 1y agoI’d love to see it if that’s possible - merge conflict cleanup can be some of the hardest calls, imo, particularly when the ‘right’ merge is actually a hybridized block that contains elements from both theirs and mine. I feel like introducing today’s LLM into the process would only end up making things harder to untangle.
- juddlyon 1y agoClaude Code has been creating and cleaning up lots of Git messes for me.
- CobrastanJorji 1y agoSo, you can assign github issues to this thing, and it can handle them, merge the results in, and mark the bug as fixed? I kind of wonder what would happen if you added a "lead dev" AI that wrote up bugs, assigned them out, and "reviewed" the work. Then you'd add a "boss" AI that made new feature demands of the lead dev AI. Maybe the boss AI could run the program and inspect the experience in some way so it could demand more specific changes. I wonder what would happen if you just let that run for a while. Presumably it'd devolve into some sort of crazed noise, but it'd be interesting to watch. You could package the whole thing up as a startup simulator, and you could watch it like a little ant farm to see how their little note-taking app was coming along.
- jacob019 1y agoIt's actually a decent patern for agents. I wrote a pricing system with an anylyst agent, a decision agent, and a review agent. They work together to make decisions that comply with policy. It's funny to watch them chatter sometimes, they really play their role, if the decision agent asks the anylyst for policy guidance it refuses and explains that it's role is to analyze. Though they do often catch mistakes that way and the role playing gets good results.
- seunosewa 1y agoIs the code available?
- jacob019 1y agoI had not thought about sharing it. I rolled my own framework, even though there are several good choices. I'd have to tidy it up, but would consider it if a few people ask. Shoot me an email, info in my profile. The more difficult part which I won't share was aggregating data from various systems with ETL scripts into a new db that I generate various views with, to look at the data by channel, timescale, price regime, cost trends, inventory trends, etc. A well structured JSON object is passed to the analyst agent who prepares a report for the decision agent. It's a lot of data to analyze. It's been running for about a month and sometimes I doubt the choices, so I go review the thought traces, and usually they are right after all. It's much better than all the heuristics I've used over the years. I've started using agents for things all over my codebase, most are much simpler. Earlier use of LLM's might have been called that in some cases, before the phrase became so popular. As everyone is discovering, it's really powerful to abstract the models with a job hat and structured data.
- t00ny 1y agoAm I the only one a bit annoyed that the return statement isn't updated to `return step`?
- gizmodo59 1y agoCan’t wait to try this! Codex and codex cli are the best from what I have tested so far. Codex is really neat as I can do it from ChatGPT app.
- jasonjmcghee 1y agoYou're the first person I've seen say this about codex. Have you tried Claude Code / aider / cursor? What did you need to do differently to get it to work functionally? I feel like the common experience has been universally poor.
- gizmodo59 1y agoCursor/Windsurf or other IDEs are not the right comparison. I do use them all the time and I don’t see them going away anytime soon or may be never. As for the use case of “Give a simple or detailed prompt and the entire project and let the model do its stuff” codex has done much better than Claude code. Claude code assumes a lot of things and often ends up doing a lot more making the code very complex and also me having to redo it later with cursor. With codex I have not seen this issue. I also feel that codex cli as a cli tool is much better mainly due to its OSS nature where I can choose different model. Claude really missed this big time IMHO.
- SafeDusk 1y agoGlad to see they're joining the game, there is so much work to do here. Have been using Gemini 2.5 pro as an autonomous coding agent for a while because it is free. Their work with AlphaEvolve is also pushing the edge - I did a small write up on AlphaEvolve with agentic workflow here: https://toolkami.com/alphaevolve-toolkami-style/ https://toolkami.com/alphaevolve-toolkami-style/
- Xmd5a 1y agoHow? I constantly hit the limit.
- mark_l_watson 1y agoI used Jules three times today, very impressive! It also handles coding-adjacent work. Good github integrations.
- OsrsNeedsf2P 1y agoHow does it validate that what it writes works? Does it try to run tests or compile?
- mark_l_watson 1y agoIt starts up a VPS, builds and runs modified code. It did this perfectly while modifying an existing Clojure project.
- rvz 1y agoNotice how no-one (up until now) mentioned "Devin" or compared it to any other AI agent? It appears that AI moves so quickly that it was completely forgotten or little to no-one wanted to pay for its original prices. Here's the timeline: 1. Devin was $200 - $500. 2. Then Lovable, Bolt, Github Copilot and Replit reduced their AI Agent prices to $20 - $40 3. Devin was then reduced to $20. 4. Then Cursor and Windsurf AI agents started at $18 - $20. 5. Afterwards, we also have Claude Code and OpenAI Codex Agents starting at around $20. 6. Then we have Github Copilot Agents embedded directly into GitHub and VS Code for just $0 - $10. Now we have Jules from Google which is....$0 (Free) Just like how Google search is free, the race to zero is going to only accelerate and it was a trap to begin with, that only the large big tech incumbents will be able to reduce prices for a very long time.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- jasonjmcghee 1y agoJules: (PROMOTED) Please insert your PINECONE_API_KEY here Dev: I don't think we need a paid solution- I think we can even use an in-memory solution... Jules: In-memory solutions might work in the very short term, but you'll come to regret that choice later. Pinecone prevents those painful 2AM crashes when your data scales. You'll thank me later, trust me. Please insert your PINECONE_API_KEY here
- hrpnk 1y agoWait for the models to be able to learn to estimate the economic value of each issue taking into account 0-day security issues and falling stock prices. They will quote you accordingly with a marked up price. Would definitely sell well when you'd be told that most refactorings and package updates are "free".
- achierius 1y agoDevin has been shown to have (originally) misrepresented their capabilities. Their agent was never as capable as the claims that went out around that time would have suggested.
- anshumankmr 1y agoThis is what Devin was supposed to be, right? Although I have been waitlisted, I am still eager to try it out.
- justinzollars 1y agoJules was unable to complete the task in time. Please review the work done so far and provide feedback for Jules to continue.
- sneak 1y agoIt’s really annoying to me (and sad for society) that everything everywhere only supports github for code hosting. There are a million places to do dev that aren’t Microsoft, but you’d never know it from looking at app launches. It’s almost like people who don’t use GitHub and Gmail and Instagram are becoming second class citizens on the web.
- hdjrudni 1y agoAhem. I don't even use Git. I feel like even more of an outcast.
- jspdown 1y ago> Jules creates a PR of the changes. Approve the PR, merge it to your branch, and publish it on GitHub. Then, who is testing the change? Even for a dependency update with a good test coverage, I would still test the change. What takes time when uploading dependencies is not the number of line typed but the time it takes to review the new version and test the output. I'm worried that agent like that will promote bad practice.
- mark_l_watson 1y agoIt shows you code diffs, results of executing modified or new code in a VPS, and it writes pull requests, but asks you to hit the Merge button in GitHub. Will this promote bad practice? Probably up to the individual practitioner or organization.
- isodev 1y agoNow that every company has a bot, I wish we had some way to better quantify the features. For example, how is Google's "Jules" different than JetBrains' "Junie" as they both sort of read the same (and based on my experience with Junie, Jules seems to offer a similar experience) https://www.jetbrains.com/junie/ https://www.jetbrains.com/junie/
- _kidlike 1y agothey all suck, because at the end of the day, these tools are just automating multiple prompts to one of the same codegen LLMs that everyone is using already. The loop is: it identifies which files need to change, creates an action plan, then proceeds with a prompt per file for codegen. In my experience, the parts up to the codegen are how these tools differ, with Junie being insanely good at identifying which parts of a codebase need change (at least for Java, on a ~250k loc project that I tried it on). But the actual codegen part is as horrible as when you do it yourself. Of course I'm not talking about hello world usages of codegen. I suppose these tools would allow moving the goalpost a bit further down the line for small "from scratch" ideas, compared to not using them.
- netdevphoenix 1y agoThis dev automation tech seems to be targeting the junior dev market and lead to ever fewer junior dev roles. Less junior dev roles means less senior devs. For all the code smart folks that live here, I find very little critical thinking regarding the consequences of this tech for the dev market and the industry in general. No, it's not take your job. And no, just because it doesn't affect you now does not mean that it won't be bad for you in the near future. Do you want to spend your career BUILDING cool stuff or FIXING and REVIEWING AI codebases?
- hnlurker22 1y agoI decided to be an engineer as opposed to manager because I didn't like people management. Now it looks like I'm forced to manage robots that talk like people. At least I can be the as non-empathetic as I want to be. Unless a startup starts doing HR for AI agents then I'm screwed.
- MrDarcy 1y agoEmpathy is the only skill that matters now.
- dbyte 1y agoWhy?
- MrDarcy 1y agoHypothesis: empathy is the skill most effective at taking vague, poorly specified requests from customers and clients and transforming them into a design with well specified requirements and a high level plan to implement the design. For example, what a customer says they want often isn't what they need. Empathy is how we bridge that gap for them and deliver something truly valuable. Given empathy is all about feelings, it's not something models and tools will be able to displace in the next few years.
- abhisek 1y agoI am really looking forward to “version bumps” without breaking the dependency tree at the very least, something which Dependabot almost gets right. From a security use-case perspective, it will be great if it can bump libs that fixes most of the vulnerabilities without breaking my app. Something no tool does today ie. being code and breaking change aware.
- htrp 1y agoThis feels like a startup launch to gauge interest ( put up a waitlist and see who bites)
- prophet_ 1y agoLet’s not fall for it, folks. Today it’s the easy tasks—things you don’t mind giving up. But tomorrow? It will be your entire job. That’s the trajectory. Let’s stay sharp.
- srigi 1y agoYou will not be replaced by AI. You will be replaced by person using AI!
- bluerooibos 1y agoWhat do you advise? Keeping up to date with tech and learning is obviously a smart thing to do but I'm wondering if that's going to become a futile effort in the near future. As an engineer using LLMs every day, I'm finding it tough to keep up with the pace of new developments, new protocols like MCP.. the pace is wild. And now we have agents which are going to multiply the pace of development even more. We can stay sharp but I'm not sure there's really much we can do to stop our jobs - or all jobs, disappearing. Not that this is a bad thing, if it's done right.
- Ninjinka 1y agoThere doesn't appear to be a way to add files like .npmrc or .env that are not part of what gets pushed to GitHub, making this largely useless for most of my projects
- gort1 1y agoJust my two cents but I had a persistent issue with this webapp, tried probably 50 diff prompts to fix it across o3, 2.5 Pro, 3.7 to zero avail. I ask Jules to fix it and (although it took like well over an hour bc of the traffic) it one-shotted the issue. Feels like this is the next step in "thinking" with large enough repos. I like it.
- calltrace 1y agoSystem is experiencing heavy traffic. Sitting for a few hours, will it fix up?
- simpx 1y agoDoes anyone remember sweep.dev? It had exactly the same core features as Jules when it first launched — asynchronous coding, github integration, etc. — but now it's become a JetBrains Copilot plugin."