Taking Coding to the Next Level: A Deep Dive into Gemini Code Assist's New Features

Published On Thu Apr 10 2025

Gemini Code Assist, Google's AI coding assistant, gets 'agentic' capabilities upgrade

Gemini Code Assist, Google’s AI coding assistant, is gaining new “agentic” capabilities in preview. During its Cloud Next conference on Wednesday, Google said Code Assist can now deploy new AI “agents” that can take multiple steps to accomplish complex programming tasks. These agents can create applications from product specifications in Google Docs, for example, or perform code transformations from one language to another. Code Assist is now available in Android Studio in addition to other coding environments.

Code Assist’s upgrades are likely in response to competitive pressure from rivals such as GitHub Copilot, Cursor, and Cognition Labs, the creator of the viral programming tool Devin. The AI coding assistant market grows fiercer by the month, and there’s a lot of money in it. Considering the tech’s productivity-boosting potential, that’s not totally surprising.

Code Assist's New Agents

Gemini Code Assist, Google's AI coding assistant, is getting an upgrade with new "agentic" capabilities. These new capabilities enable Code Assist to take multiple steps to tackle complex programming tasks. The AI "agents" can generate software from product specifications, conduct code transformations between languages, and more. Code Assist is expanding its presence to Android Studio and other coding environments.

An application-centric, AI-powered cloud

Code Assist’s agents, which can be managed from a new Gemini Code Assist Kanban board, can generate work plans and report step-by-step progress on job requests. Beyond generating software and migrating code, the agents can implement new app features, execute code reviews, and generate unit tests and documentation, the company claims.

However, it’s unclear just how well Code Assist can do all this. Even the best code-generating AI today tends to introduce security vulnerabilities and bugs, studies have found, owing to weaknesses in areas like the ability to understand programming logic.

Code Assist by Google is making strides in the AI coding assistant space. Its new agents can handle various programming tasks efficiently. As the market for AI coding tools intensifies, it will be interesting to see how Code Assist competes with other players like GitHub Copilot and Cursor.