JetBrains goes all-in on agents with Central

JetBrains has announced Central, a unified agentic platform designed to govern, orchestrate, and manage AI agents across development teams. Built around three pillars — governance and policy enforcement, cloud infrastructure for agent execution, and a semantic context layer using AST-based code intelligence — Central aims to bridge the gap between AI adoption and measurable productivity gains. Key features include intelligent model routing, support for third-party agents (Claude, Codex, Gemini CLI) via the open Agent Client Protocol, and a hybrid pricing model combining per-seat subscriptions with pay-as-you-go agentic execution and BYOK support. However, Central launches amid trust concerns: JetBrains faced backlash last year over mid-contract pricing changes, and pricing for Central remains unannounced. The platform also coincides with the sunsetting of Code With Me, raising questions about JetBrains' commitment to non-agentic features. Engineering leaders are advised to carefully map the growing JetBrains portfolio — which now includes Junie, Koog, Grazie, Mellum, Air, and Air Team — before committing.