# ThinkRail by JetBrains

11 Hacker News commenters recommended ThinkRail by JetBrains and 27 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 2 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** Liked for worktrees as the core unit and use of the Pi agent core. Most common caveat: critics call it a VS Code wrapper that is feature-incomplete.

## Why people recommend it

- Worktrees as the core unit (2 comments): "Worktrees as the essential unit of the project interface, not a secondary feature." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49439630)) "Now I can open each worktree in a separate window as if it were its own project." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50235805))
- Promising, polished interface direction (2 comments): "This is moving in the direction towards a final interface, very good." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50235176)) "I like what they did with the website UI" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50220053))

## What people warn about

- AI-generated, marketing-style writing (4 comments): "Looks interesting, but they need to clean up the claudese in those bullet points" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50235461)) "It is an "agentic IDE", a tool intended for people who don't bother writing a readme." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50237638)) "How is this llm-vomit "specs that are ground truth" etc.?" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50235344))
- VS Code wrapper like other editors (3 comments): "instead they decided to make some kind of VS code wrapper and hope people pay it over other editors" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50219997)) "Not if they're going to be a VSCode skin like everyone else." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50219846)) "An AI slop webpage trying to sell me VS Code bullshit." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50220188))
- Feature-incomplete, may not last (3 comments): "That doesn't exactly inspire confidence that this product will stick around." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50240292)) "They now have both Air and ThinkRail in a feature-incomplete state" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50219882)) "Overall it just looks like an experimental direction for IDE dev." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50237097))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Windsurf](https://hackerapproved.com/p/windsurf.md): 42 recommend
- [AWS Kiro](https://hackerapproved.com/p/kiro.md): 36 recommend
- [JetBrains Air](https://hackerapproved.com/p/jetbrains-air.md): 13 recommend
- [Zed Delta](https://hackerapproved.com/p/zed-delta.md): 9 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "ThinkRail by JetBrains", https://hackerapproved.com/p/jetbrains-thinkrail/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).