Google’s Jules enters developers’ toolchains as AI coding agent competition heats up

Summary

Google is bringing its AI coding agent Jules deeper into developer workflows with a new command-line interface and public API, allowing it to plug into terminals, CI/CD systems, and tools like Slack — as competition intensifies among tech companies to own the future of software development and make coding more of an AI-assisted task. Until now, Jules — Google’s asynchronous coding agent — was only accessible via its website and GitHub. On Thursday, the company introduced Jules Tools, a command-line interface that brings Jules directly into the developer’s terminal. The CLI lets developers interact with the agent using commands, streamlining workflows by eliminating the need to switch between the web interface and GitHub. It allows them to stay within their environment while delegating coding tasks and validating results. “We want to reduce context switching for developers as much as possible,” said Kathy Korevec, director of product at Google Labs, in an interview. Google already offers Gemini CLI, an AI-based command-line tool that works across developer environments like terminals and CI/CD pipelines. Both Gemini CLI and Jules use Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro AI model under the hood. However, Korevec told TechCrunch that Jules Tools is designed for “very scoped tasks,” while Gemini CLI requires users to be “a lot more iterative” and to “collaborate a lot more with the tool.” Google’s Jules ToolsImage Credits:Google Google’s senior developer advocate Denise Kwan also elaborated in a Medium post on how Jules differs from Gemini CLI. Jules is less interactive by design, she noted, and executes tasks independently once the user approves its plan. In addition to the CLI, Google has made Jules’ API public, which it had previously used for internal development. The purpose of this is also to help developers use Jules more often as they can extend the tool into their existing workflows where they have “a lot of muscle memory and familiarity,” Korevec said. Developers can also ...