AI Tool Switching Is Stealth Friction – Beat It at the Access Layer | The JetBrains AI Blog

Recent research by JetBrains and UC Irvine highlights a hidden form of context switching among AI-assisted developers, where increased switching between IDEs goes unnoticed by 74% of developers, despite telemetry data indicating a rise in this behavior. This phenomenon indicates that while AI tools are perceived to boost productivity, they also introduce a subtle layer of friction that traditional behavioral policies fail to address. The solution lies in architectural changes, specifically consolidating the access layer to reduce cognitive load without sacrificing flexibility. This approach aligns with platform engineering principles that prioritize creating seamless "golden paths" for developers, allowing them to access multiple AI tools within a single environment, such as JetBrains IDEs, which now support features like Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) and Agent Client Protocol (ACP) for integrating various AI models.