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Jules: An asynchronous coding agent

jules.google

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Re: Jules: An asynchronous coding agent

#3

Post by candiddevmike »

breakingwalls wrote: post #2

Wow, 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-codi...

Google IO is this week, same as Microsoft Build. Battle of the attention grabbing announcements.

Re: Jules: An asynchronous coding agent

#4

Post by thorum »

Google’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

Re: Jules: An asynchronous coding agent

#6

Post by xianshou »

Both 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.

Re: Jules: An asynchronous coding agent

#7

Post by kylecazar »

kcatskcolbdi wrote: post #5

> 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!

Oh, 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.

Re: Jules: An asynchronous coding agent

#8

Post by candiddevmike »

thorum wrote: post #4

Google’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

You're the product here, though.

EDIT: legal link doesn't work here (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

Re: Jules: An asynchronous coding agent

#9

Post by _pdp_ »

The 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.

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