CodeWhisperer

Overview

CodeWhisperer is AWS's AI-powered coding assistant, now delivered as part of Amazon Q Developer, the most capable generative AI–assistant for software development. It is designed to help developers build faster across the entire software development lifecycle. Available as a plugin or extension for popular integrated development environments (IDEs) such as VS Code, JetBrains, IntelliJ IDEA, Visual Studio, and Eclipse, as well as through the command line, CodeWhisperer provides real-time code suggestions, inline chat, and agentic capabilities that can autonomously implement features, generate documentation, run tests, review and refactor code, and perform software upgrades.

The assistant goes beyond simple auto-completion. It offers real-time code suggestions from snippets to full functions based on comments and existing code, plus inline chat in the editor and CLI completions with natural language-to-bash translation. CodeWhisperer can be securely connected to private repositories to generate context-aware code recommendations, answer questions about company code, and accelerate understanding of internal code bases. Its security scanning capabilities detect vulnerabilities in code and suggest fixes, outperforming leading publicly benchmarkable tools across most popular programming languages. The agentic coding experience can automatically read and write files, generate code diffs, and execute shell commands while incorporating user feedback and providing real-time updates—achieving the highest scores on the SWE-Bench Leaderboard and Leaderboard Lite.

CodeWhisperer is also an expert on AWS, integrated into the AWS Management Console, Microsoft Teams, and Slack to help users optimize cloud costs and resources, provide architectural best practices, investigate operational incidents, and diagnose networking issues. It accelerates application transformation, including .NET porting from Windows to Linux and Java upgrades such as Java 8 to Java 17. For data and AI teams, it enables natural language query generation, coding assistance for data pipelines, machine learning model design, and collaboration on AI projects with built-in data governance. The assistant supports GitLab Duo and GitHub workflows, making it adaptable to existing enterprise development ecosystems.

CodeWhisperer is built with enterprise-grade security and privacy. When using the Pro tier, proprietary content is not used for service improvement, and it integrates with AWS IAM Identity Center to respect existing governance identities, roles, and permissions. A perpetual Free Tier is available, offering 50 agentic chat interactions per month and up to 1,000 lines of code transformation per month. Developers can get started with the AWS Free Tier, download a plugin or extension, and begin using the assistant within minutes.

Core capabilities

Real-time code suggestions

Generates code suggestions ranging from snippets to full functions based on your comments and existing code.

Agentic coding capabilities

Automatically reads and writes files, generates code diffs, and runs shell commands to complete multistep tasks like testing, documentation, and code reviews.

AWS expert assistance

Ask questions about AWS capabilities, review resources, analyze bills, and architect solutions based on well-architected patterns.

Private repository customization

Securely connect to private code repositories for more relevant recommendations and deeper understanding of internal code bases.

Security scanning and remediation

Detects vulnerabilities in code, suggests fixes, and outperforms leading tools on vulnerability detection across popular languages.

Code transformation agents

Accelerates Java upgrades (e.g., Java 8 to 17) and .NET porting from Windows to Linux, reducing costs and manual effort.

Data and AI development support

Create natural language queries, get coding help for data pipelines, design ML models, and collaborate with data governance.

Multi-environment availability

Works in IDEs, CLI (locally and over SSH), AWS Management Console, GitLab, GitHub, Microsoft Teams, and Slack.

Inline chat and CLI translation

Supports inline chat in the editor and natural language-to-bash translation in the command line.

Enterprise-grade privacy and IAM integration

Pro tier excludes proprietary content from service improvement; integrates with AWS IAM Identity Center for access controls.

Use cases

Accelerating daily feature development with real-time code suggestions and inline chat

Automating unit test generation, documentation, and code reviews through agentic workflows

Upgrading Java applications (e.g., from Java 8 to 17) or porting .NET apps from Windows to Linux

Scanning codebases for vulnerabilities and applying instant remediation suggestions

Using natural language to query data, build pipelines, and design machine learning models

Troubleshooting AWS operational incidents and optimizing cloud cost through chat platforms

Customizing code recommendations for private, proprietary repositories and internal standards