Google has released an early preview of Project IDX, a browser-based development experience built on Google Cloud and powered by Codey, a foundational AI model trained on code and built on PaLM 2. Project IDX is also built on Code OSS, Code-Open Source Software, the core layer of VS Code.

The developers say Project IDX can be used to build, manage and deploy full-stack web and multiplatform applications. The key concept of Project IDX is that of workspaces, each with the full capabilities of a Linux-based VM. The workspaces are hosted in the cloud. 

Developers can import existing projects from GitHub as well as creating new projects, with templates for popular frameworks including Angular, Flutter, Next.js, React, Svelte, Vue, and languages such as JavaScript, Go and Dart. Python support will be added soon, along with support for more project types and frameworks. Project IDX includes a built-in web preview and the developers say a fully-configured Android emulator and an embedded iOS simulator are coming soon. All will be available directly in the browser.

Behind the scenes, Project IDX makes use of Google's AI-based facilities, including the Codey and PaLM 2 models that are used in Studio Bot in Android Studio and Duet in Google Cloud. At the moment, Project IDX has smart code completion, an assistive chatbot, and contextual code actions like "add comments" and "explain this code". The developers say the AI capabilities are in their very early days.

The final element of Project IDX is its integration with Firebase Hosting. The Project IDX team says this makes it possible to deploy a shareable preview of your web app, or deploy to production with a fast, secure, and global hosting platform, with just a few clicks. Firebase Hosting also supports dynamic backends, powered by Cloud Functions, so this also works with full-stack frameworks such as Next.js.

Project IDX is available in preview now.

More Information

Project IDX

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