AI-Powered JavaScript Completions

Thanks for your patience!

First, the most important consideration for us was if our completions model could provide a good user experience 1) locally and 2) with minimal CPU and memory usage footprint. While we're constantly tuning the product's performance, Kite already uses less memory and CPU than TabNine. We know how important it is to save resources (and battery life!) when you're developing, so this was a huge sticking point for us.

Second, we've also put a ton of thought into dealing with the visual noise that completions of this nature introduce. The completions that are predicted by models such as Kite's and TabNine's can sometimes be irrelevant or redundant, so it's important to design filters that reduce the amount of what we call "low value" completions shown so that developers are less distracted. In Python, we have a best-in-class static analysis engine that we use to filter out low value completions. We don't have our own proprietary JS static analysis engine yet, but we've done some UX "hacks" to make sure Kite's JS completions aren't redundant and don't crowd out other completions the user may find useful e.g. native completions from the IDE.

Third, (and this is a point mainly for Python), is that Kite is much more than just completions. We also provide help for calling functions, instant documentation and we have some more features in the works. Completions certainly help developers physically write code, but we know that "writing code" also includes a lot of reading, debugging, etc. So we're trying to build a product that helps out developers in all phases.

Examples:

1. I memoized the arguments for a util function. Repeat this on the very similar functions defined alongside it.

2. I need to put a wrapper component around six similar components. Just do it for me after seeing me do it once.

3. I imported a new logging mechanism and called a specific method from it in one of my class's methods. Repeat for four similar classes.

Basically I want a "repeat after me" functionality that can intelligently infer which part of thing I just did is generic and can thus be replaced with the next item in the series. In a dream future it would also infer what the next items in the series are.

I haven't a clue how such a thing could be created though, or I would already be on it myself. It would have to understand the code not just syntactically but conceptually.

God it would make development less tedious though. The difference between today and that future is the same as the difference between today and the days of punchcards.