JetBrains Koog Comes to Java: Enterprise AI Agent Framework for the JVM
JetBrains has expanded Koog, its JVM-native AI agent framework, to fully support Java as a first-class language. Previously available primarily for Kotlin, Koog for Java landed its stable Java API on March 17, 2026, giving Java teams direct access to the framework's enterprise-grade agent capabilities without requiring any Kotlin interop layer.
Koog replaces ad hoc prompt chaining with structured, observable, and fault-tolerant agent workflows. The Java API exposes fluent builder-style APIs and native Java abstractions across three workflow strategies: functional pipelines, graph-based multi-step plans, and planning-oriented agents that decompose tasks automatically. The framework integrates directly with Spring Boot, so teams can embed AI agents into existing Java backends without introducing separate Python services or new infrastructure. It also ships with OpenTelemetry observability, Langfuse and Weights & Biases Weave support for tracing, and built-in history compression to control token costs.
On the model side, Koog works with all major LLM providers — OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, DeepSeek, and Ollama — through a unified PromptExecutor abstraction. Java developers get blocking API builders for PromptExecutor and LLMClient, ExecutorService control for fine-grained thread pool management, and Jackson as the default serializer. Fault tolerance is first-class: agents can persist their state across crashes and redeployments using AIAgentStorage with JVM-specific methods.
For enterprise teams that have resisted AI agent tooling because of Python dependencies or Kotlin-only SDKs, Koog for Java is a direct answer. The Spring Boot integration in particular means adding AI agent behavior to an existing microservice can follow the same patterns the team already knows — dependency injection, configuration properties, and standard application lifecycle management.
Read more — JetBrains AI Blog
Java Annotated Monthly – April 2026: JavaOne, Kotlin 2.3.20, and Conference Season
JetBrains' April 2026 edition of Java Annotated Monthly, guest-authored by Java Champion Marit van Dijk, rounds up the most notable events and releases in the Java ecosystem following Java 26's March 17 launch. The newsletter highlights that March was "particularly rich" for Java news — from the JDK release itself to IDE tooling catching up on the same day.
JavaOne 2026 featured a session on 25 years of IntelliJ IDEA history, including the release of an official documentary covering the IDE's evolution from a small IDE startup to a core part of the Java platform tooling ecosystem. The event also featured deep dives into virtual thread debugging in IntelliJ and Project Leyden's ongoing work to reduce JVM startup and warmup time — a topic of increasing relevance as more teams deploy containerized Java services at scale.
Kotlin 2.3.20 was announced alongside the April roundup, with continued improvements to the Kotlin ecosystem. For Java developers working in mixed JVM codebases, the update maintains the strong compatibility story that JetBrains has invested in since K2. Spring I/O 2026, held in Barcelona, features multiple sessions on Spring Boot 4, Spring AI, and observability tooling — the conference calendar is packed through May with Devoxx France and Voxxed Days events across Europe as well.
For teams evaluating where to invest learning time in 2026, the roundup signals a clear trend: the JVM ecosystem is leaning hard into AI-assisted development tooling, startup performance improvements, and native cloud deployments — all areas where Java's continued investment in Project Leyden and GraalVM native image is paying off.
Read more — JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA Blog
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