Devnexus 2026 - Brokk, an AI Native Code Platform for Java, in Java - Jonathan Ellis

This session covers Brokk, a standalone AI-assisted development tool built with Java Swing, designed to supervise code-writing AI assistants. The speaker explores the architectural and design principles behind Brokk, highlighting the need for effective context engineering in software development, which differs from traditional IDE designs. The discussion demonstrates how Brokk utilizes static analysis to enable large language models to better understand source code, thereby enhancing accuracy and minimizing hallucinations in AI-assisted workflows. Additionally, the session addresses Java-specific optimizations like dependency decompilation and the JVM technologies involved, including Eclipse JDT for static analysis and Jlama for Java LLM inference, offering insights into the future of AI-native software development environments.