Google Gives Jules a CLI and API to Supercharge Developer Workflows
The AI coding agent can now run tasks from the terminal and integrate into CI/CD pipelines, making automation and large-scale coding easier
Google is making it easier for developers to use its AI coding agent to build apps. The company is adding a command-line interface (CLI) and previewing an API that could bring the GitHub Copilot rival directly into a developer’s preferred system or workflow.
First introduced in 2024, Jules was an experimental AI agent developed by Google Labs. It was celebrated as “an early glimpse of what a true coding agent could become. Not a copilot, not a code-completion sidekick, but an autonomous agent that reads your code, understands your intent, and gets to work.” Last August, it became generally available.
But now, Google’s AI coding assistant faces stiff competition from not only Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot, but also OpenAI’s Codex, Cursor, Lovable, Anthropic’s Claude Code, Amazon’s Codewhisperer, Codeium, Tabnine, and more. Although Google claims today’s announcements are about giving developers greater control and flexibility, it’s also an effort for the company to stay one step ahead.
It starts with Jules Tools, a lightweight, command-line interface. Developers can bring it directly into their terminal, where they can start, stop, and verify tasks alongside their own commands. However, Jules isn’t the only bot with a CLI, as Google also has a Gemini CLI. By incorporating a CLI, the company is transforming Jules into an enterprise-grade coding assistant, one that can operate across all environments, is well-suited for automation, and can be adopted by more teams.
Next is the Jules API, which Google is starting to open up access to. This feed enables developers to integrate Jules into their systems and workflows, allowing them to trigger tasks when a bug is filed in Slack, wire the coding assistant into their continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipeline, and use Jules on any surface where they build.
Both Jules Tools and the API should be accessible today.
Jules isn't the only Google tool getting the CLI treatment. There's a new Workspace CLI (gws) that just dropped; covers Drive, Gmail, Calendar, Sheets from the terminal with structured JSON output. The interesting bit is it was built for agents from day one. Schema introspection, defensive input validation, field masks for context window discipline. Different beast from Jules but the same signal from Google. Wrote it up here: https://reading.sh/google-workspace-finally-has-a-cli-and-its-built-for-agents-5f5fe87d0425?sk=b8d7be183e42d86eed2ebe2ba315e273