The Serena JetBrains Plugin

The Serena JetBrains Plugin#

The JetBrains Plugin allows Serena to leverage the powerful code analysis and editing capabilities of your JetBrains IDE.

We recommend the JetBrains plugin as the preferred way of using Serena, especially for users of JetBrains IDEs.

Purchasing the JetBrains Plugin supports the Serena project. The proceeds from plugin sales allow us to dedicate more resources to further developing and improving Serena.

Advantages of the JetBrains Plugin#

There are multiple features that are only available when using the JetBrains plugin:

  • External library indexing: Dependencies and libraries are fully indexed and accessible to Serena

  • No additional setup: No need to download or configure separate language servers

  • Enhanced performance: Faster tool execution thanks to optimized IDE integration

  • Multi-language excellence: First-class support for polyglot projects with multiple languages and frameworks

  • Enhanced retrieval capabilities: The plugin supports additional retrieval tools for type hierarchy information as well as fast and reliable documentation/type signature retrieval

We are also working on additional features like a move_symbol tool and debugging-related capabilities that will be available exclusively through the JetBrains plugin.

Configuring Serena to Use the JetBrains Plugin#

After installing the plugin, you need to configure Serena to use it.

Central Configuration.

Edit the global Serena configuration file located at ~/.serena/serena_config.yml (%USERPROFILE%\.serena\serena_config.yml on Windows). Change the language_backend setting as follows:

language_backend: JetBrains

Note: you can also use the button Edit Global Serena Config in the Serena MCP dashboard to open the config file in your default editor.

Per-Instance Configuration. The configuration setting in the global config file can be overridden on a per-instance basis by providing the arguments --language-backend JetBrains when launching the Serena MCP server.

Verifying the Setup. You can verify that Serena is using the JetBrains plugin by either checking the dashboard, where you will see Languages: Using JetBrains backend in the configuration overview. You will also notice that your client will use the JetBrains-specific tools like jet_brains_find_symbol and others like it.

Workflow#

Having installed the plugin in your IDE and having configured Serena to use the JetBrains backend, the general workflow is simple:

  1. Open the project you want to work on in your JetBrains IDE

  2. Open the project’s root folder as a project in Serena (see Project Creation and Project Activation)

  3. Start using Serena tools as usual

Note that the folder that is open in your IDE and the project’s root folder must match.

Tip

If you need to work on multiple projects in the same agent session, create a monorepo folder containing all the projects and open that folder in both Serena and your IDE.

Usage with Other Editors#

We realize that not everyone uses a JetBrains IDE as their main code editor. You can still take advantage of the JetBrains plugin by running a JetBrains IDE instance alongside your preferred editor. Most JetBrains IDEs have a free community edition that you can use for this purpose. You just need to make sure that the project you are working on is open and indexed in the JetBrains IDE, so that Serena can connect to it.

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