Feature Request: Native AI Assistant Integration for NetBeans

[sunjavanet]

Description

I would like to propose the integration of a native AI assistant within NetBeans to enhance developer productivity and align the IDE with modern development standards.

AI-assisted development is rapidly becoming a core capability in modern IDE ecosystems. Developers increasingly rely on AI tools for intelligent code completion, refactoring suggestions, debugging assistance, documentation generation, and automated test creation. Currently, NetBeans does not provide built-in AI support, requiring developers to switch to external tools or third-party solutions, which interrupts workflow and reduces efficiency.

Proposed Capabilities:

Context-aware AI code completion

Smart refactoring and optimization suggestions

Inline explanations for complex logic

Automated unit test generation

Documentation generation (Javadoc support)

Integrated AI chat panel with project-level context awareness

Strategic Value:

Strengthens NetBeans' competitive position in the modern IDE landscape

Attracts new developers and improves onboarding

Increases productivity for Java, Spring Boot, Jakarta EE, and JavaFX developers

Encourages community-driven AI plugin extensions

This enhancement would significantly modernize the NetBeans experience and reinforce its role as a powerful, future-ready Java IDE.

Thank you for considering this proposal.

Use case/motivation

No response

Related issues

No response

Are you willing to submit a pull request?

No

[Chris2011]

First I would suggest to use those plugins: https://github.com/manojkumarredbus/netbeans-Ollama and https://github.com/emilianbold/claude-code-netbeans. Ollama is a builtIn plugin which you can try and also create tickets there for improvements. For Claude code netbeans you need the terminal. The idea is later to implement such claude code into NetBeans as or vs code etc. But not soon. This needs a lot work, also with Ai assitant development. For my personal view there is need for some improvements in the API of NetBeans (make some things public) so 3rd party plugins can be implemented.