Good to see competition for Codex. I think cloud-based async agents like Codex and Jules are superior to the Claude Code/Aider/Cursor style of local integration. It's much safer to have them completely isolated from your own machine, and the loop of sending them commands, doing your own thing on your PC and then checking back whenever is way better than having to set up git worktrees or any other type of sandbox yourself
> I think cloud-based async agents like Codex and Jules are superior to the Claude Code/Aider/Cursor style of local integration
Ideally, a combination of both I feel like would be a productive setup. I prefer the UI of Codex where I can hand-off boring stuff while I work on other things, because the machines they run Codex on is just too damn slow, compiling Rust takes forever and it needs to continuously refetch/recompile dependencies instead of leveraging caching, compared to my local machine.
If I could have a UI + tools + state locally while the LLM inference is the only remote point, the whole workflow would end up so much faster.
Why is the pricing so well hidden? I had to ask Grok. Google would not show even the overview page unless I click-to-agree to all their terms and conditions.
OK found a good page for the plans here… ymmv if you're not logged in:
The daily task limit went down from 60 to 15 (edit: on the free plan) with this release. Personally I wasn't close to exhausting the limit because I had to spend time going back and forth, and fixing its code.
I've been playing with it, and I've been generally not impressed.
There are both obvious annoying UI bugs (which should be easy to fix unless they vibe coded the whole thing) and the output of the tool isn't very good for anything but the simplest problems.
If the model was really good, I'd love this, but it's not.
Why has Google totally overcomplicated their subscription models?
Looking at "Google AI Ultra" it looks like I get this Jules thing, Gemini App, Notebook, etc. But if I want Gemini CLI, then I've got to go through the GCP hellscape of trying to create subscriptions, billing accounts then buying Google Code Assist or something, but then I can't get the Gemini app.
Then of course, this Google AI gives me YouTube Premium for some reason (no idea how that's related to anything).
I subscribed to ultra to give deep think a try but i will not extend it even a day for all the other packaging put together by someone who might be working for a competitor. Who does these things and the fragmentation is crazy as mentioned. Chinese deep agents may be entrenched(just kidding), its crazy that someone up the ladder is so off point and not worry about losing his job.
You're forgetting the 'Google Developer Premium' subscription ($300/y) which also bundles Gemini Code Assist / CLI, some Vertex credits, but none of the other Gemini things
One can make an argument that other Gemini stuff shouldn't be in there because it's not dev related, but Jules at least should
They block me from subscribing because I have a custom domain for my personal email. I’d gladly give them money but they say “Sign up with your personal email” when I try to subscribe. Such poor design
At this point, I'm not sure whether Google is just full of people trolling the world, or people so smart and unworldly that they are trolling themselves. The website for Jules has a section for plans, yet it's neither mention the price, nor which actual plan they are talking about or where I can find those f**ing plans, not even a link. This is just ridiculous. Has Google already replaced all their people with AI?
I installed Gemini CLI today, went to AI studio, got a free Gemini 2.5 Pro API key (without setting up billing or a credit card) and auth'd with Gemini CLI using the key. Took like 30 seconds. Unfortunately the results were much poorer than what I've been getting with Claude Code.
What does it mean by "asynchronous coding agent" exactly? They don't go into any details there. Like how does this differ from Gemini CLI? Is this more of a pass a high level idea to it and then go on vacation sort of thing? If so, I don't see how that can't end badly.
Tried both Jules and Gemini CLI, heavily advertised and disappointing. Running it on any slightly more complex codebase, it will crash every few iterations and then complain I have drained all the credits (although it hasn’t done anything yet), not close to live up any basic expectations to their advertised generosity. Disappointing experience
I've used this tool for a few months now and have been pretty impressed by it. It handles large quantities of tasks very well and is good at making tests for very specific/isolated functions.
I have found it is not very good when trying to make new projects with different react libraries, inside of existing projects (for instance, my admin UI that I had it place inside of my existing server project).
If you start noticing it change directories and move around and delete/move directories a lot, you should stop the process, reconsider what you're telling it to do and how, then start from scratch with a new task.
I've been actually kind-of enjoying using Jules as a way of "coding" my side project (a react native app) using my phone.
I have very limited spare time these days, but sometimes on my walk to work I can think of an idea/feature, plan out what I want it to do (and sometimes use the github app to revise the existing code), then send out a few jobs. By the time I get home in the evening I've got a few PRs to review. Most of the code is useless to me, but it usually runs, and means I can jump straight into testing out the idea before going back and writing it properly myself.
Next step is to add automatic builds to each PR, so that on the way home I can just check out the different branches on my phone instead of waiting to be home to run the ios simulator :D
Im not sure about how this translates to react native, AFAICT build chains for apps less optimiside, but using vercel for deployment, neon for db if needed, Ive really been digging the ability for any branch/commit/pr to be deployed to a live site i can preview.
Coming from the python ecosystem, ive found the commit -> deployed code toolchain very easy, which for this kind of vibe coding really reduces friction when you are using it to explore functional features of which you will discard many.
It moves the decision surface on what the right thing to build to _after_ you have built it. which is quite interesting.
I will caveat this by saying this flow only works seamlessly if the feature is simple enough for the llm to oneshot it, but for the right thing its an interesting flow.
I've tried using Jules for a side project, and the code quality it emits is much worse than GH Copilot (using Claude Sonnet), Gemini CLI, and Claude Code (which is odd, since it should have the same model as Gemini CLi). It also had a tendency to get confused in a monorepo -- it would keep trying to `cd backend && $DO_STUFF` even when it was already in backend, and iterate by trying to change `$DO_STUFF` rather than figure out that it's already in the backend directory.
I’m I being pedantic or does the jules.google landing page screams “howdie, kids” (the Buschemi meme).
It tries to be funny and authentic, but the cheap looking mascot and low contrast text makes it feel like IBM pretending to be vibecoded startup.
Google has/had a distinct branding with its austere and no-nonsense style in the past, then moved into a clunky-but-not-AWS design aesthetic with GCP (which is still recognizable), and now the AI products just look so completely inconsistent, you can’t even tell they’re from Google
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 44.2 ms ] thread"Usability declines in inverse proportion to the number of vice-presidents who sign the release notes." Law of Interface Inversion
Ideally, a combination of both I feel like would be a productive setup. I prefer the UI of Codex where I can hand-off boring stuff while I work on other things, because the machines they run Codex on is just too damn slow, compiling Rust takes forever and it needs to continuously refetch/recompile dependencies instead of leveraging caching, compared to my local machine.
If I could have a UI + tools + state locally while the LLM inference is the only remote point, the whole workflow would end up so much faster.
OK found a good page for the plans here… ymmv if you're not logged in:
https://gemini.google/subscriptions/
Edit: it seems this is a hosted version. Would be nice if they actually joined up some of their products.
Where can I check them out?
To communicate with the Jules team join https://discord.gg/googlelabs
There are both obvious annoying UI bugs (which should be easy to fix unless they vibe coded the whole thing) and the output of the tool isn't very good for anything but the simplest problems.
If the model was really good, I'd love this, but it's not.
Looking at "Google AI Ultra" it looks like I get this Jules thing, Gemini App, Notebook, etc. But if I want Gemini CLI, then I've got to go through the GCP hellscape of trying to create subscriptions, billing accounts then buying Google Code Assist or something, but then I can't get the Gemini app.
Then of course, this Google AI gives me YouTube Premium for some reason (no idea how that's related to anything).
One can make an argument that other Gemini stuff shouldn't be in there because it's not dev related, but Jules at least should
I installed Gemini CLI today, went to AI studio, got a free Gemini 2.5 Pro API key (without setting up billing or a credit card) and auth'd with Gemini CLI using the key. Took like 30 seconds. Unfortunately the results were much poorer than what I've been getting with Claude Code.
That said, Gemini is very powerful for it's quality long-context capabilities: https://www.reddit.com/r/ClaudeAI/comments/1miweuv/comment/n...
I have found it is not very good when trying to make new projects with different react libraries, inside of existing projects (for instance, my admin UI that I had it place inside of my existing server project).
If you start noticing it change directories and move around and delete/move directories a lot, you should stop the process, reconsider what you're telling it to do and how, then start from scratch with a new task.
I have very limited spare time these days, but sometimes on my walk to work I can think of an idea/feature, plan out what I want it to do (and sometimes use the github app to revise the existing code), then send out a few jobs. By the time I get home in the evening I've got a few PRs to review. Most of the code is useless to me, but it usually runs, and means I can jump straight into testing out the idea before going back and writing it properly myself.
Next step is to add automatic builds to each PR, so that on the way home I can just check out the different branches on my phone instead of waiting to be home to run the ios simulator :D
Coming from the python ecosystem, ive found the commit -> deployed code toolchain very easy, which for this kind of vibe coding really reduces friction when you are using it to explore functional features of which you will discard many.
It moves the decision surface on what the right thing to build to _after_ you have built it. which is quite interesting.
I will caveat this by saying this flow only works seamlessly if the feature is simple enough for the llm to oneshot it, but for the right thing its an interesting flow.
It tries to be funny and authentic, but the cheap looking mascot and low contrast text makes it feel like IBM pretending to be vibecoded startup.
Google has/had a distinct branding with its austere and no-nonsense style in the past, then moved into a clunky-but-not-AWS design aesthetic with GCP (which is still recognizable), and now the AI products just look so completely inconsistent, you can’t even tell they’re from Google