Ability to generate code in multiple files with AI Assistant
Is it possible to generate the code in multiple files from a single prompt, the way it's possible in Cursor? When working on a feature, it's common to touch multiple files:
1. create DTO class in […].dto.ts file
2. create endpoint in […].controller.ts file and use DTO class class as body type
3. add some business logic in […].service.ts class and call it from endpoint
Cursor Composer can do this with a single prompt and offers preview of all 3 files and changes in them. If I wish to replicate similar workflow with AI Assistant in IntelliJ,
1. I'll have to talk with it via chat and copy/paste relevant snippets OR
2. navigate to multiple files and generate very “locally scoped” code while I keep track of the overall progress of implementation in my head and use Assistant just to generate snippets of the code and not the whole feature.
With Cursor Composer I could generally implement 90% of the feature with a single prompt (and followup refinements, similar to how I can do them with AI Assistant) but with Assistant, I have to write multiple prompts, each in their own file.
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Try “Continue”, it supports multiple files.
Hello Matic Leva ,
Unfortunately, it's not possible yet to generate multiple files in AI Assistant.
A similar feature request is reported in https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/LLM-7148.
Please vote for it to prioritize it for the development team and receive notifications from the ticket.
Above link is dead, does that mean you have stopped working on it ??
Harshasuranjith
Actually the link is not dead, there was a dot character included in the URL. Here it is: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/LLM-7148. It is currently in progress, but there is no specific planned date yet, unfortunately. Please follow the report for progress updates.
I tried to have the AI assistant generate a bunch of POJO classes representing the content of an XML file. The result was abysmal. A: It could only generate sources in the chat; for each single class, I had to click a little icon to have it create a source file in the actual project folder and copy the code in it. B: The generated source files had invalid names; they were different than the name of the actual classes, instantly resulting in a compiler error. So I had to manually rename each and every file. Until I realized that… C: the content was incomplete. The assistant generated classes, members and accessor methods only for some of the XML contents - but not all. D: On top of it all, it chose to weirdly add a “Config” suffix to each and every class for no obvious reason.
After messing with it for about two hours I gave up and created the POJO classes myself. Considering this is, from my point of view, a very typical use-case were AI support should make things very easy and quick, this was very disappointing. Especially the fact that the AI assistant is really just a very poorly integrated AI chat window with now actual access to the project folder makes this a bad joke to me.
Marcel Schön
Sorry to hear about your experience. The automatic file generation from AI chat is being reworked currently. The new implementation is planned for the next stable release - 2025.1. It should fix the issues you mentioned. As for the incorrect file name when invoking ‘Create File from Snippet’, it is a known issue, it is also being worked on.
The mentioned reports in the issue tracker are internal/private unfortunately: