AI Tools for Kotlin Development: 2024 Overview

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AI Tools for Kotlin Development: How Artificial Intelligence is Changing Code Writing in Kotlin

Kotlin is one of the fastest-growing programming languages in 2024, actively used for Android development, server-side solutions, and multiplatform projects. However, even experienced Kotlin developers spend up to 30% of their time on routine tasks: writing boilerplate code, debugging, and refactoring. Modern AI tools can take over these operations, speeding up development by 2-3 times. In this review, we have gathered the best AI solutions for working with Kotlin.

1. GitHub Copilot — Leader Among AI Assistants

GitHub Copilot (based on OpenAI Codex) remains the most popular tool for Kotlin. Integrated into IntelliJ IDEA, Android Studio, and VS Code, it offers autocompletion of entire functions, classes, and tests. Features for Kotlin:

Generation of Android components (Activity, Fragment, ViewModel) considering MVVM and MVI architectural patterns.
Automatic creation of unit tests for coroutines and Flow.
Contextual understanding of Ktor, Kodein, Exposed libraries.
Code refactoring with Java to Kotlin conversion.

The only downside is that a subscription is required for full functionality ($10/month).

2. Tabnine — Privacy and Customization

Tabnine (formerly Codota) is an alternative for companies with high security requirements. The tool learns from your code without sending data to the cloud (a local model is available). For Kotlin, Tabnine offers:

Completion of DSL constructs (Gradle, Anko, HTML DSL).
Prediction of call chains for collections (map, filter, flatMap).
Support for Kotlin Multiplatform with autocompletion for expect/actual.
Integration with Git: analysis of changes for accurate suggestions.

Tabnine is available for free (basic version) and in Pro ($12/month).

3. Kodee — Specialized AI for Kotlin

Kodee is a relatively new open-source tool created by the JetBrains community. Unlike general solutions, Kodee is trained exclusively on Kotlin code from GitHub and Stack Overflow. Key capabilities:

Generation of KDoc documentation for public APIs.
Detection of code smells (excessive let, unnecessary elvis operators).
Conversion of Java code to Kotlin considering language idioms.
Creation of coroutine handlers for Retrofit and Room.

Kodee is distributed for free as a plugin for IntelliJ IDEA.

4. AI Assistants for Debugging: Replit AI and CodeGPT

For finding errors in Kotlin projects, Replit AI (built into the Replit environment) and CodeGPT (an extension for VS Code) are effective. They analyze logs, error stacks, and suggest fixes. For example:

Automatic parsing of NullPointerException exceptions with recommendations for using safe call (?.) or elvis (?:).
Coroutine optimization: replacing GlobalScope with viewModelScope.
Refactoring nested if-else into when expressions.