[HN Gopher] Jules: An Asynchronous Coding Agent
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Jules: An Asynchronous Coding Agent
Author : travisennis
Score : 109 points
Date : 2025-05-19 21:12 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (jules.google)
(TXT) w3m dump (jules.google)
| breakingwalls wrote:
| Wow, it looks like Google and Microsoft timed their announcements
| for the same day, or perhaps one of them rushed their launch
| because the other company announced sooner than expected. These
| are exciting times!
|
| https://github.blog/changelog/2025-05-19-github-copilot-codi...
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Google IO is this week, same as Microsoft Build. Battle of the
| attention grabbing announcements.
| thorum wrote:
| Google's ability to offer inference for free is a massive
| competitive advantage vs everyone else:
|
| > Is Jules free of charge?
|
| > Yes, for now, Jules is free of charge. Jules is in beta and
| available without payment while we learn from usage. In the
| future, we expect to introduce pricing, but our focus right now
| is improving the developer experience.
|
| https://jules-documentation.web.app/faq
| candiddevmike wrote:
| You're the product here, though.
|
| EDIT: legal link doesn't work here (https://jules-
| documentation.web.app/faq#does-jules-train-on-...)
|
| > No. Jules does not train on private repository content.
| Privacy is a core principle for Jules, and we do not use your
| private repositories to train models. Learn more about how your
| data is used to improve Jules.
|
| It's hard to tell what the data collection will be, but it's
| most likely similar to Gemini where your conversation can
| become part of the training data. Unclear if that includes
| context like the repository contents.
|
| https://jules.google.com/legal
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| They're going to make so much money when nobody knows how to
| code or think anymore without the crutch.
| falcor84 wrote:
| I'll just put this here:
|
| > And so it is that you by reason of your tender regard for
| the writing that is your offspring have declared the very
| opposite of its true effect. If men learn this, it will
| implant forgetfulness in their souls. They will cease to
| exercise memory because they rely on that which is written,
| calling things to remembrance no longer from within
| themselves, but by means of external marks.
|
| > What you have discovered is a recipe not for memory, but
| for reminder. And it is no true wisdom that you offer your
| disciples, but only the semblance of wisdom, for by telling
| them of many things without teaching them you will make
| them seem to know much while for the most part they know
| nothing. And as men filled not with wisdom but with the
| conceit of wisdom they will be a burden to their fellows.
|
| - Plato quoting Socrates in "Phaedrus", circa 370 BCE
| noduerme wrote:
| But did you memorize that quote, or was it sufficient to
| know its gist so you could google it?
| Avicebron wrote:
| At least with writing it's fairly easy to implement on
| your own with little more than what most people would
| have available in a rudimentary survival situation. It'll
| be a tough day when someone goes to sign into their
| GoogleLife (tm) and find out that they can't get AI
| access because "precluding conditions agreed to upon
| signing"
| jstummbillig wrote:
| I read that a couple of times. It sounds vaguely clever and a
| bit ominous, but I have no clue what it means. Can you
| explain?
|
| Google products had had a net positive impact on my life
| over, what is it, 20 years now. If I had had to pay
| subscription fees over that span of time, for all the
| services that I use, that would have been a lot of very real
| money that I would not have right now.
|
| Is there a next step where it all gets worse? When?
| diggan wrote:
| > Google's ability to offer inference for free is a massive
| competitive advantage vs everyone else:
|
| Haven't tried Jules myself yet, still playing around with
| Codex, but personally I don't really care if it's free or not.
| If it solves my problems better than the others, then I'll use
| it, otherwise I'll use other things.
|
| I'm sure I'm not alone in focusing on how well it works, rather
| than what it costs (until a certain point).
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| That's all good and well but its takes time to compare the
| products. And people are rarely willing to use paid product
| for comparison.
| diggan wrote:
| > That's all good and well but its takes time to compare
| the products
|
| Hence many of us are still busy trying out Codex to it's
| full extent :)
|
| > And people are rarely willing to use paid product for
| comparison.
|
| Yeah, and I'm usually the same, unless there is some free
| trial or similar, I'm unlikely to spend money unless _I
| know_ it 's good.
|
| My own calculation changed with the coming of better LLMs
| though. Even paying 200 EUR/month can be easily regained if
| you're say a freelance software engineer, so I'm starting
| to be a lot more flexible in "try for one month"
| subscriptions.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| I haven't read too much from others, but personally for
| me Codex online form was the biggest productivity boost
| in coding since the original Copilot.
|
| Cursor just deleted my unit tests too many times in agent
| mode.
|
| Codex 5x-ed my output, though the code is worse than I
| would write it, at this point the productivity
| improvement with passing tests, not deleting tests is
| just too good to be ignored anymore.
| ijidak wrote:
| What do you mean by "online form"?
| 85392_school wrote:
| There are some limits:
|
| > 2 concurrent tasks
|
| > 5 total tasks per day
| threatofrain wrote:
| This is standard startup play. Have a free beta stage and then
| transition into pricing.
| kcatskcolbdi wrote:
| > Thanks for your interest in Jules. We'll email you when Jules
| is available.
|
| Well here's to hoping it's better than Cursor. I doubt it
| considering my experiences with Gemini have been awful, but I'm
| willing to give it a shot!
| kylecazar wrote:
| Oh, I got an email invitation to try it out this morning...
| This post reminded me to give it a go. I don't remember asking
| for an invitation -- not sure how I got on a list.
| xianshou wrote:
| Both Google and Microsoft have sensibly decided to focus on low-
| level, junior automation first rather than bespoke end-to-end
| systems. Not exactly breadth over depth, but rather reliability
| over capability. Several benefits from the agent development
| perspective:
|
| - Less access required means lower risk of disaster
|
| - Structured tasks mean more data for better RL
|
| - Low stakes mean improvements in task- and process-level
| reliability, which is a prerequisite for meaningful end-to-end
| results on senior-level assignments
|
| - Even junior-level tasks require getting interface and
| integration right, which is also required for a scalable data and
| training pipeline
|
| Seems like we're finally getting to the deployment stage of
| agentic coding, which means a blessed relief from the
| pontification that inevitably results from a visible outline
| without a concrete product.
| _pdp_ wrote:
| The copy though: "Spend your time doing what you want to do!"
| followed by images of play video games (I presume), ride a
| bicycle, read a book, and play table tennis.
|
| I am cool with all of that but it feels like they're suggesting
| that coding is a chore to be avoided, rather than a creative and
| enjoyable activity.
| beatboxrevival wrote:
| I think they are suggesting that you can focus on the code that
| you want to write - whatever that is. Especially since the
| first line is, "Jules does coding tasks you don't want to do."
| I took the first image as being someone working on the
| computer. Or, take back your time doing whatever you want -
| e.g. cycling, table tennis, etc.
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| That's a nuance worth exploring. The world is being optimized
| for clockwatchers who want to do their work with the least
| amount of effort. Before long (if not already) people who enjoy
| their craft, and think of their work as a craft, will be
| ridiculed for wanting to do it themselves.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >The world is being optimized for clockwatchers who want to
| do their work with the least amount of effort. Before long
| (if not already) people who enjoy their craft, and think of
| their work as a craft, will be ridiculed for wanting to do it
| themselves.
|
| There is one clock you should be watching regardless, which
| is the clock of your life. Your code will not come see you in
| the hospital, or cheer you up when you're having a rough day.
| You wont be sitting around at 70 wishing you had spent more
| 3am nights debugging something. When your back gives out from
| 18hrs a day of grinding at a desk to get something out, and
| you can barely walk from the sciatica, you wont be thinking
| about that great new feature you shipped. There are far more
| important things in life once you come to terms with that,
| and you will learn that the whole point of the former is
| enabling the latter.
| bmgxyz wrote:
| Writing code _has_ helped me feel better on some bad days.
| Even looking back at old projects brings me contentment and
| reassurance sometimes. On its own, it can't provide the
| happiness that a balanced life can, but craft and
| achievement are definitely pleasing. I would consider it an
| essential part of a good life, regardless of what the
| actual activity is.
|
| This is different from meaningless work that brings you
| nothing except a paycheck, which I agree is important to
| minimize or eliminate. We should apply machines to this
| kind of work as much as we can, except in cases where the
| work itself doesn't need to exist.
| esafak wrote:
| You could say the same about every job, so you are really
| arguing against jobs in general. Who's going to help you
| fix your sciatica if your doctor and physical therapist
| think like that?
| diggan wrote:
| > it feels like they're suggesting that coding is a chore to be
| avoided, rather than a creative and enjoyable activity
|
| I occasionally code for fun, but usually I don't. I treat
| programming as a last-resort tool, something I use only when
| it's the best way to achieve my goal. If I can achieve some
| thing without coding or with coding, I usually opt for the
| first unless the tradeoffs are really shit.
| azhenley wrote:
| So many agent tools now. What is the special sauce of each?
| airstrike wrote:
| Spoiler alert: there isn't one
| meta_ai_x wrote:
| Context Window and Pricing absolutely matters
| dcre wrote:
| But many "agentic" tools are model-agnostic. The question
| is about what the tool itself is doing.
| meta_ai_x wrote:
| Gemini has 1 Million context window, which usually works better
| for coding.
|
| When it gets priced, it's usually cheaper (for the same
| capability)
| turnsout wrote:
| These coding agents are coming out so fast I literally don't have
| time to compare them to each other. They all look great, but
| keeping up with this would be its own full time job. Maybe that's
| the next agent.
| mountainriver wrote:
| Any coding solution that doesn't offer the ability to edit the
| code in an IDE is nonsense.
|
| Why would I ever want this over cursor? The sync thing is kinda
| cool but I basically already do this with cursor
| diggan wrote:
| Heh, personally I'd say any coding solution that lives inside
| an IDE is nonsense :P Funny how perspectives can be so
| different. I want something standalone, that I can use in in a
| pane to the left/right of my already opened nvim instance, or
| even further away than that. Gave Cursor a try some weeks ago
| but seems worse than Aider even, and having an entire editor
| just for some LLM edits/pair programming seems way overkill and
| unnecessary.
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| I really want to try out Google's new Gemini 2.5 Pro model that
| everyone says is so great at coding. However, the fact that Jules
| runs in cloud-based VMs instead of on my local machine makes it
| much less useful to me than Claude Code, even if the model was
| better.
|
| The projects I work on have lots of bespoke build scripts and
| other stuff that is specific to my machine and environment.
| Making that work in Google's cloud VM would be a significant
| undertaking in itself.
| dcre wrote:
| You can use Aider with Gemini. All you need is an API key.
|
| https://aider.chat/docs/leaderboards/
| 85392_school wrote:
| > Also, you can get caught up fast. Jules creates an audio
| summary of the changes.
|
| This is an unusual angle. Of course Google can do this because
| they have the tech behind NotebookLM, but I'm not sure what the
| value of telling you how your prompt was implemented is.
| manmal wrote:
| I guess the idea is vibe coding while laying in bed or driving?
| If my kids are any indication of the generation to come, they
| sure love audio over reading.
| Taniwha wrote:
| "Spend your time doing what you want to do!" - I enjoy coding
| cool new code ....
| beatboxrevival wrote:
| I think that's the point AI agents are trying to sell. Spend
| more time on the type of coding tasks you want to do, like
| coding cool new code, and not the tasks that you don't want to
| do.
| bionhoward wrote:
| No privacy documentation? No terms of use? Is this a joke?
|
| Here's a "reasoning trace:" You want to use Gemini? Why would you
| if AI Studio is way better? Oh, privacy? Except to get privacy in
| Gemini, you need to turn off Gemini Apps Activity, which _deletes
| your entire chat history..._ (forcing you to manually copy paste
| every input and output into notes).
|
| OpenAI might be a bunch of monopolistic assholes, but at least
| you can (manually opt out of hidden) training ChatGPT without
| losing your entire chat history.
|
| Another big reason not to use AI Studio, even though it's free
| and way better than the PAID Gemini offering, is you can't use it
| for anything that competes with it. It being general
| intelligence. Meaning this is yet another instance of the "you
| can't use our AI for anything" legal term trend. Luckily, they
| don't explicitly mention Gemini app in their "Additional API
| Terms" here:
|
| [1] https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/terms
|
| > You may not use the Services to develop models that compete
| with the Services (e.g., Gemini API or Google AI Studio).
|
| Then you go and use Google search, and it tries to send you to
| fucking AI Mode in a different app, can you guys pick a lane ? Am
| I supposed to use Gemini with no chat history, AI studio for the
| free better app and get brain raped and sued by a
| megacorporation, or Google "AI Mode" and get redirected back and
| forth from my browser a billion times?
|
| And what's the cost to user experience for switching between
| three different apps with different rules and maintaining three
| interfaces?
|
| Which brings me back to Jules. How do we know what's the privacy
| policy for Jules? How do we know if we're "allowed" to use it for
| AI?
|
| Businesses using this type of thing need to return two booleans
| confidently: are they training on our private codebase? Are they
| gonna ban or sue us for breaking the rules?
|
| Linking to the general Google terms and privacy pages doesn't
| really inspire much (any) confidence in the privacy aspect, and
| who knows if Jules counts as Gemini API thing? Are we supposed to
| just pray it doesn't count as using the Gemini API even though it
| probably does? If Google trains on everything then how can we
| trust them not to do it on our code?
| lofaszvanitt wrote:
| And the logo is an octopus? Heh, nice connotations. Now I'm gonna
| trust my data with this for sure :DD.
| 111111101101 wrote:
| I was interested. Clicked the try button and just another wait
| list. When will Google learn that the method that worked so well
| with Gmail doesn't work any more. There are so many shiny toys to
| play with now, I will have forgotten about this tomorrow.
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(page generated 2025-05-19 23:00 UTC)