Google’s Jules enters developers’ toolchains as AI coding agent competition heats up (techcrunch.com)

Google has pushed its AI coding agent Jules deeper into developer toolchains by launching Jules Tools (a command‑line interface) and a public API, letting the agent run inside terminals, CI/CD pipelines, Slack, and IDEs rather than only via web and GitHub. Jules—an asynchronous agent that plans tasks and then executes them after user approval—now includes “memory,” a stacked diff viewer, image upload, and pull‑request comment handling. Jules and Google’s Gemini CLI both run on the Gemini 2.5 Pro model, but Google positions Jules for tightly scoped, less interactive tasks while Gemini CLI is for more iterative collaboration. Jules currently operates within GitHub repos but Google says it’s exploring other version‑control and non‑VCS workflows. For AI/ML and dev-tool communities this matters because CLI and API access reduces context switching and enables automation to be embedded directly into real-world workflows, increasing throughput for repetitive or scoped coding tasks. It also raises governance and security considerations—agents pausing when stuck helps oversight, but mobile notifications and broader integration expand attack surface and operational complexity. Pricing tiers (free with limited daily tasks; Pro and Ultra paid plans) signal Google is commercializing Jules as a persistent developer assistant. The move intensifies competition to own developer workflows and accelerates the normalization of AI agents as first‑class components in modern software toolchains.