JetBrains has announced that it will discontinue its Fleet IDE on December 22, 2025. This decision comes after the company concluded that maintaining two general-purpose integrated development environments (IDEs) was not sustainable or distinctive enough, particularly in comparison to its IntelliJ-based offerings and VS Code.
Despite multiple attempts to reposition Fleet as a lightweight IDE, an AI-first editor, and a tool for agentic workflows, it struggled to carve out a clear niche and often confused users with its overlapping features. Fleet, while a valuable experiment, was unable to provide sufficient differentiation from IntelliJ or justify its existence as a standalone product.
The Fleet team will now shift focus to developing a new agentic development environment, provisionally named ‘Air’. Currently in public preview, Air is built upon Fleet’s platform and requires an Anthropic subscription. It aims to leverage AI-driven workflows, allowing agents to manage tasks such as refactoring and feature building, thus catering to the emerging market for agent-based development tools.
Although concerns exist about the potential for repeating strategic missteps, JetBrains remains optimistic that Air will find its footing in a rapidly evolving landscape that increasingly values AI integrations in software development. This move marks JetBrains’ second major pivot within a short span, from competing with popular IDEs like VS Code with Fleet, to focusing on AI-driven development tools. Through Air, JetBrains hopes to establish a distinct identity in agentic development, transforming lessons learned from Fleet’s journey into a new era of innovation.

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JetBrains is discontinuing Fleet IDE on December 22, 2025, after failing to differentiate itself from IntelliJ and VS Code. Despite attempts to position it as a lightweight, AI-first editor, Fleet couldn't establish a clear niche. The Fleet team is pivoting to develop 'Air', a new agentic development environment currently in public preview that leverages AI-driven workflows for tasks like refactoring and feature building. Air is built on Fleet's platform and requires an Anthropic subscription, representing JetBrains' second major strategic shift toward AI-driven development tools.

JetBrains Discontinues Fleet IDE, Shifts Focus to AI-Driven Tool Air