Feedback & Feature Request: Native Full-Stack AI Development & Unified Workflow Support in IntelliJ IDEA 2026

Hi JetBrains Team,

I’m a senior full-stack engineer with 8+ years of hands-on experience building Java-based applications, and a long-time loyal user of your product ecosystem. For years, my standard development workflow relied on IntelliJ IDEA exclusively for Java & Spring Boot backend development, paired with WebStorm for frontend (Vue/React/TypeScript) engineering.

However, with the explosive advancement of AI agents and large language models in software development, my workflow has been completely reshaped. Today, I only use IntelliJ IDEA for core compilation, packaging, and final code review tasks. For end-to-end full-stack development, I’ve fully switched to Cursor: I organize both my Spring Boot backend and frontend projects in a single unified directory, and with custom rule sets and development skill prompts, I can seamlessly write, debug, and iterate on frontend and backend code side-by-side in one editor, with consistent AI assistance across the full stack.

I was incredibly excited to see the massive AI capabilities upgrade and native LLM integration in the IntelliJ IDEA 2026 release, as I’ve been eager to centralize my entire development workflow back into the IDE I trust most. But after thorough testing, I’ve found two critical gaps that are preventing me from fully migrating back, which I’d like to share as both feedback and a formal feature request:

1. Unified AI-Powered Full-Stack Development in a Single WorkspaceRight now, I haven’t found a way to replicate the seamless full-stack AI development experience I get in Cursor, within a single IntelliJ IDEA window and project workspace. I’m unsure if this functionality is already fully supported in the 2026 release and I simply haven’t found the correct configuration steps, or if native support for unified, cross-stack AI assistance (with custom rule/skill configuration for full-stack scenarios) is not yet available.
2. Native Support for Concurrent Frontend & Backend Service Management in One WorkspaceBeyond AI assistance, a core pain point of my current IDEA workflow is the inability to conveniently launch, manage, and monitor both my Spring Boot backend service and frontend dev server (e.g., Vite, Webpack) within the same single project workspace. As a full-stack developer, I need to start, debug, and stop both services frequently during daily development, and having to switch between multiple IDE windows or project instances creates unnecessary friction and breaks my development focus.

As a long-time user, my greatest hope is that IntelliJ IDEA can natively support a truly unified full-stack development workflow:

• Allow full, consistent AI-assisted code completion, generation, and refactoring across both backend Java/Spring Boot and frontend codebases in a single workspace, with support for custom full-stack development rules and prompt presets.
• Enable one-click startup, unified management, and parallel debugging of both Spring Boot applications and frontend dev servers within the same project window, without needing to open multiple IDE instances or switch between different projects.

This would let developers like me complete our entire workflow — from AI-driven full-stack code writing, to local service debugging, compilation, packaging, and deployment — all within a single IntelliJ IDEA instance, eliminating the need to jump between multiple editors entirely.

If these features are already available in IDEA 2026, I would be extremely grateful for a detailed official guide on how to properly configure and use them. If they are not yet implemented, I sincerely hope you will consider this feedback for your upcoming release iterations.

Thank you endlessly for your continuous work to build the most powerful and developer-friendly IDEs on the market.