AI Tools for Kotlin Development: 2024 Overview

Artificial Intelligence in the Kotlin World: What Should a Developer Choose?

The Kotlin ecosystem continues to evolve rapidly, and artificial intelligence is becoming an integral part of the modern developer's workflow. In 2024, AI-based tools have ceased to be just toys — they genuinely speed up code writing, debugging, and refactoring. We have compiled for you an overview of the best AI solutions that every Kotlin developer should try.

JetBrains AI Assistant: A Native Tool for Kotlin

The developers of IntelliJ IDEA could not ignore the trend. JetBrains AI Assistant is a plugin deeply integrated into the development environment. It understands the context of a Kotlin project, including coroutines, Compose Multiplatform, and Ktor. Key features:

• Auto-completion of entire functions and classes, taking into account your code style.
• Generation of unit tests for Kotlin classes (support for JUnit and kotlin.test).
• Explanation of complex code and refactoring using natural language queries.
• Integration with KMP (Kotlin Multiplatform) — generation of expect/actual declarations.

This tool is especially good for those who already use JetBrains products: it requires no context switching and works out of the box.

GitHub Copilot: A Universal Assistant

GitHub Copilot, based on GPT-4, remains one of the most popular AI assistants. For Kotlin, it generates code that often looks like it was written by an experienced developer. Copilot excels at:

• Writing boilerplate code for data classes and sealed classes.
• Creating complex call chains using scope functions (let, apply, run).
• Generating code for coroutines and Flow.

The downside: Copilot does not always know the latest changes in the Kotlin ecosystem (e.g., newly stabilized features). If you use cutting-edge capabilities, manually verify the generated code.

Tabnine: Focus on Privacy and Customization

Tabnine offers local AI models that run directly on your computer. This is critical for companies where sending code to external servers is prohibited. For Kotlin, Tabnine offers:

• Auto-completion tailored to your codebase (the model learns from your project).
• Support for Android development: generation of XML resources, ViewBinding, Compose components.
• Refactoring of legacy Java code into modern Kotlin.

Important: Tabnine is slightly inferior to Copilot in "creativity" — it is better at generating obvious solutions than complex architectural patterns.

Codeium: A Free Alternative

Codeium (now known as Warp AI) offers a generous free tier. For Kotlin developers, it is especially useful if you work with:

• Ktor (generation of routes, middleware, serialization).
• Kotlin Multiplatform (templates for expect/actual).
• Libraries like Exposed (SQL queries in DSL style).

The tool supports all major IDEs, including IntelliJ IDEA, Android Studio, and VS Code (via an extension).

Practical Recommendations

Which tool to choose? It all depends on your tasks: