JetBrains AI Hackathon, Powered by Google

Dmitriy Novakovskiy – Head of Customer Engineering, Google Cloud | Digital Natives, Central & Eastern Europe

It is the most humbling and rewarding feeling for us at Google Cloud to see the great things developers make happen with our technology. With the recent Gemini x JetBrains hackathon, we were happy to see the community of brilliant engineers (at JetBrains) putting our latest Gemini Ultra and Pro 1.5 models through a rigorous test – in the most creative context possible! We were truly inspired by all of the useful projects that came out of just two short days, many of which were truly innovative and “production-worthy”.

The team and I really enjoyed co-hosting this event with the JetBrains team, and we are very much looking forward to doing more of those, always with the “best of Google” technology brought to the table.

Alexander Khokhlyavin

The idea for the project came to me while I was on vacation. So, imagine this: I’m chilling on the beach, minding my own business, when I overhear some work chatter on the phone. Suddenly, all thoughts of sun and sand are replaced by dread about catching up on work stuff when I get back. But instead of letting it ruin my vibe, I think, “Hey, wouldn’t it be awesome if there was a tool that could do all this catching up for me?” And just like that, our AI Hackathon project was born!

Nikita Volkov

We started by surveying users with a Google Form, offering early access to the bot. This formed the basis for our advertising campaign. Then, we refined the concept and functionality. Some ideas came up during casual discussions with colleagues in the kitchen. We realized it was crucial to keep the solution simple and user-friendly, given the limited time. During the hackathon, we went from “Can we really pull this off?” to “This is gonna be epic!” It was a rollercoaster of emotions but it was worth it! 

Oxana Shumilova

During all our Hackathons together, we’ve always kept the positive vibes. So, for our presentation, we wanted to bring that same energy: positivity, humor, and fun. That’s when we had a brilliant idea: Let’s kick off with a hilarious sketch about someone coming back from vacation!

As the clock ticked down to the end of the hackathon, we were in a race against time. Sasha sent me our video just minutes before the deadline. I was also in charge of putting the final touches on the video. Easy, right? Not exactly – the video was taking forever to render. We were rushing, nervous, and on edge. The hackathon presentation started at 13:00, and our video was finally ready at 13:03! But hey – we made it! 

Anastasia Shabalina

The idea of integrating AI into the code review process made perfect sense, as this process is crucial but time-consuming for developers. Initially, our VCS team had about ten ideas for the hackathon and joked about selling them, but it was tough to choose the best. After pitching and voting, the AI Review Assistant didn’t make the initial cut.

Feeling we might be overlooking something, I revisited our list and gathered feedback from 10 random colleagues. Many supported the AI Review Assistant and expressed their eagerness to use it immediately. Encouraged by this feedback, we decided to pursue it at the AI Hackathon. With Ivan Semenov, Nikolay Rykunov, Egor Bogomolov, and Alexander Koshevoy, we refined the idea.

Originally, we planned for AI to handle reviews independently, but it became clear that AI was better suited to assist. Thus, from the initial idea of generating ready-made comments, we expanded the concept. Now, AI Assistant includes a to-do guide plan for reviews with code navigation, AI-generated comments in the editor, and the ability to clarify details directly within the comments.

By the end of the first day, we’d built a working prototype and had all had a great time, complete with music and singing.

Ultimately, the AI Review Assistant emerged as our winning project, directly addressing real user needs and exciting the team. We were thrilled to win 1st place in both categories at the hackathon. We were already planning to bring our AI Review Assistant to production, but this victory has given us extra energy and motivation. We hope our users will soon see the AI Review Assistant in their IDEs.

Aleksandr Chernokoz

Over the past year, we’ve been working hard to add AI features to Fleet, with the AI Assistant chat serving as a key starting point for using LLM-based features. We saw the potential for voice input and decided to develop our “voice control” project. The “voice” part refers to accepting spoken commands, but “control” goes deeper – it means allowing the LLM model to manage the IDE by triggering actions or changing settings.

Our project is also interesting because it uses a wake-up word to activate the voice assistant and relies on four different models: a local model for the wake-up word, and remote models for speech-to-text, LLM, and text-to-speech. This setup makes it great for a hackathon, as it breaks down into separate tasks that team members can work on at the same time and then combine when ready.

Maxim Zheltoukhov

First of all, I’d like to emphasize what an amazing hackathon this was! Having Google there was incredible, as it gave us access to their advanced large language models (LLMs). These new tools really changed the game, opening up tons of new possibilities and taking our AI Hackathon participation to the next level.

As for our project, it started by wondering what AI could do beyond simple text chats. Could AI handle bigger tasks? This question led to a brainstorming session with Vladimir Zatsepin, where we developed some innovative technical solutions. We equipped the AI with developer tools and showed it how to use them. As a result, we created a system that can write code based on the tasks, manage merge requests, and handle comments. This project pushed AI beyond its current limits and shows a future where AI could become a reliable and innovative helper.

Elizaveta Shashkova

We were a fortunate team because all three of us were located in Amsterdam. We came to the office, occupied one of the meeting rooms, and spent two wonderful days hacking together, discussing solutions, and drawing on a whiteboard – just like in the good old pre-COVID times!

Our team had a great variety of skills: Alexander had experience in creating features for AI Assistant, Elizaveta had experience with debugger UIs, and Pavel was our expert in prompt engineering. Therefore, the tasks were naturally split amongst us, and we were able to implement them quickly without stepping on each other’s toes.

Although we conducted a lot of experiments with different prompts, there was still a small sense of fear that once the implementation was complete, the LLM might stop providing us with desirable answers or start to hallucinate at some random moment. We were so surprised and delighted when, in the end, our debugger worked! And it worked exceptionally well on simple code snippets!

Taking part in this hackathon and implementing some fun and unusual ideas was a truly enjoyable experience!

Horia Niculescu – Customer Engineer – Data, AI, ML, Google

I’ll start by saying a huge kudos to JetBrains for being such a fantastic partner to Google in the AI space. This hackathon is yet another chapter in the incredible collaboration and shared vision between our teams.

During the hackathon I was blown away by the talent at JetBrains. All teams displayed a rare combo of business savviness and technical wizardry. It’s evident in the way they hacked together product features and organizational solutions that genuinely make a difference.

Whether it’s the code writing or code reviewing, the productivity hacks have the potential to boost developer productivity tenfold. My favorite project is the catch-up-on-work-after-vacation assistant – brilliant, fun, and crazy useful. Where do I subscribe?

I’m genuinely excited to see how these projects will be rolled out in production and how this partnership continues to unfold. I’m confident that together, we’ll deliver even more value to our customers in the months and years ahead. Let’s keep pushing the boundaries!