Google unveils Jules Tools, its AI command line coding tool
Anyone who thought command line tools were in danger of being consigned to the history books, Google’s unveiling of Jules Tools put pay to that idea.
For anyone not familiar with Google’s offerings, Jules Tools is a command line interface for its Jules asynchronous coding agent. Google is hardly setting a trend here – there are command line interfaces available for other AIs – but with Jules itself only having launched in December, the speed is a little surprising.
In a blog post about the launch, Jiahao Cai and AK Kulkarni of Google Labs say: “You can now work with Jules directly in your command line. Jules is our asynchronous coding agent that integrates directly with your existing repositories, understands the full context of your project, and performs tasks such as writing tests, building new features, providing audio changelogs, fixing bugs, and bumping dependency versions”.
They go on to say:
Until today, you’ve primarily interacted with Jules in your web browser, but we know developers live in the terminal. It’s where we test, build, debug, and ship. That’s why we built Jules Tools, a lightweight command line interface, so you can spin up tasks, inspect what Jules is doing, and make the agent your own, all without leaving your workflow.
Being artificial intelligence, the idea is clearly to make life easier, taking care of tasks without the need for human intervention. Google explains:
Jules already runs in the background, powering tasks in remote VMs and synching with your repos. When you start a task, it spins up a temporary VM, does the work there, and sends back a pull request. Nothing runs until you ask it to. The command line gives you even more direct control and visibility. It makes Jules programmable, scriptable, and customizable. You can integrate it into your own automations, or just type a few quick commands to steer Jules in real time.
Think of Jules Tools as both a dashboard and a command surface for your coding agent.
It is possible to compose it with other CLI tools. Google also points out that for developers who prefer interactive flows, Jules Tools also offers a TUI.
The simplest way to get started with Jules Tools is to install it with npm:
npm install -g @google/julesMore information about Jules Tools is available here, complete with usage examples. There is more Jules info available here.