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GitHub Copilot reaches JetBrains Air through the open Agent Client Protocol

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The short version

GitHub added Copilot to JetBrains Air's agent picker on November 3, 2026, using an open protocol JetBrains co-built with Zed rather than a GitHub-only connector, so developers can run Copilot tasks locally or in the cloud alongside the existing JetBrains plugin.

GitHub Copilot reaches JetBrains Air through the open Agent Client Protocol

GitHub added Copilot to the agent picker inside JetBrains Air on November 3, 2026, and the notable part is not the new entry point itself. GitHub reached Air by adopting a protocol it does not own, per GitHub's changelog entry.

What shipped

Developers using JetBrains Air, JetBrains' agent-native IDE, can now select GitHub Copilot in Air's agent picker, delegate a coding task, guide execution mid-run, and review the diff in context, according to the changelog. The connection runs on the Agent Client Protocol (ACP), an open, Apache-licensed standard JetBrains began co-developing with Zed in October 2025 so coding agents and editors would not each need a bespoke plugin to talk to one another, per JetBrains' announcement of the Zed collaboration. Copilot tasks in Air can run locally in the IDE, or, for Air Teams business customers, in an isolated cloud container that draws on a developer's existing Copilot subscription rather than JetBrains AI credits, per the changelog. GitHub frames the new path as a parallel option, not a replacement: it sits alongside the existing GitHub Copilot JetBrains plugin, and developers choose per task which one to use.

An open standard, not a GitHub connector, did the integration work

GitHub Copilot already reached JetBrains through a plugin and through the JetBrains AI Assistant bridge. What changed here is who built the pipe. ACP works the way the Language Server Protocol works for programming languages: an agent implements ACP once, and it then runs inside any editor that speaks the same protocol, rather than GitHub or JetBrains writing a dedicated connector for each pairing. JetBrains and Zed took that further on January 28, 2026, by launching a public ACP Agent Registry, a directory where any ACP-compatible agent can be found and installed in one click from a supporting editor, per JetBrains' registry launch post. For a developer inside Air, that lowers the cost of trying a different coding agent on the next task: Copilot sits in the same picker as other ACP agents, selectable without a separate install flow. Existing GitHub Copilot subscribers do not need a new purchase to use it in Air; cloud tasks draw against the plan they already have.

What to watch next

Whether Cursor, Cline, Continue, or other coding-agent vendors add ACP support and land in the same Air agent picker, which would show whether ACP becomes a shared standard across competing agents rather than an integration GitHub and a handful of early partners happen to share. The ACP Agent Registry, now past its beta launch, is the most likely place a broader agent lineup would surface first.

Sources