Junie

Junie is a coding assistant developed by JetBrains. Its main focus is not on being the most powerful, but on being the most energy-efficient.

A way to save money is to use different models depending on the phase of the project: use more powerful models during the planning phase and faster models during implementation. According to the official statement, the quality remains similar, but the cost difference is just a small fraction. The system supports integrating over a dozen different models, including Claude Opus 5, Claude Sonnet 5, Claude Fable 5.1, Gemini 3.1 Pro, Gemini 3.8 Flash, GPT-6 ASTRA, and Grok 4.6. There is also a “Plan Mode” that allows you to first create structured documents outlining requirements, design details, and delivery plans before starting to write the code. This approach helps reduce the amount of time and resources wasted on rework.

It is based on the IntelliJ IDEA engine, which enables it to leverage the comprehensive code analysis capabilities provided by IDEs—an advantage that pure command-line tools simply cannot match. According to the developers, it performs well in tests conducted using SWE-Rebench. There are four main ways to use it: as a plugin for JetBrains-based IDEs and Android Studio; via the command line; directly through GitHub Actions in response to issues or pull requests; or within GitLab’s CI/CD systems.

The installation method is simply to add a `curl` command in the terminal. This solution is compatible with Mac, Linux, and Windows. It’s free to use and does not require any credit card information. For those who are already using the JetBrains suite of tools, the transition process is virtually cost-free.