Amazon Web Services (AWS) has launched its Amazon Q Developer AI assistant, which is available as an add-on for popular Integrated Development Environments (IDEs) like Visual Studio Code and JetBrains.

The Q Developer offers a free tier with certain limitations, alongside a Pro tier priced at $19 per month that provides fewer restrictions on usage.

Originally introduced as Amazon CodeWhisperer in 2022, Q Developer has since evolved to include inline chat capabilities, enabling instant code modification suggestions.

This inline chat feature integrates functionalities such as code refactoring and documentation generation, making code management significantly easier for developers.

The Q Developer AI assistant is powered by Anthropic's Claude 3.5 Sonnet model, designed to streamline developer workflows by minimizing the need to switch between chat and code windows.

The Claude 3.5 Sonnet model has demonstrated a 49% success rate on the SWE-bench benchmark, showcasing its effectiveness in addressing real-world coding challenges.

Amazon Q Developer competes directly with Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot, which recently announced enhancements including multi-model support for AI assistance.

GitHub Copilot now allows developers to choose from multiple AI models, including Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Google’s Gemini 1.5 Pro, and OpenAI’s GPT-4o, providing increased flexibility for users.

Both Amazon and Microsoft are competing for dominance in the enterprise AI market, with a shared focus on enhancing developer productivity through their respective tools.

As these platforms continue to evolve, they are reshaping traditional software engineering workflows towards AI-assisted development, potentially transforming how code is written and deployed.