AI Integration Discussion: Netbeans MCP for claude code

[ivan-velikanov]

Hi,

I've been using NetBeans for 20+ years (yeah, I'm that old), and I need to share something that's been bothering me. A month ago, I was happily coding an entire program in NetBeans, typing everything by hand, referring to AI only as a better search engine and sometimes code-generator.

Now because of the shear speed with which an iteration is possible with Claude code, I haven't opened NetBeans in weeks. I'm stuck in Claude Code because that's where the AI assistance is, which is much faster than me, especially given some recent RSI issues I am facing.

The Problem

It's not that I want to abandon NetBeans. I'm being forced to choose between:

• NetBeans: Great refactoring, project management, lightweight, knows Java inside-out
• AI tools: Fast feature generation, but lacking understanding, deep consideration, and orchestration of the big picture; And especially they lack much needed refactoring and modularization workflow where we wish to break code into smaller units as it gets matured and gets each bigger (reminds me of "Practical API Design" by @jtulach )

The result? Given my RSI issues, which is exasperated from copy-pasting between Claude and various IDEs, and the AI taking too long to get things right or reasonable. It's like having a very fast junior developer who either asks clarification for everything it does or just does something which sometimes breaks 10 other things and then spends hours figuring out and fixing it.

What I'm hoping for

A few years ago, the rich tooling of Netbeans was exported out of Netbeans as a language server.

AI tools could actually use NetBeans' refactoring engine instead of blindly changing code. This would enable them to see our call hierarchies before breaking everything.

I guess it is time to provide a MCP Netbeans tool for Claude code to provide Claude code with the simple, yet powerfully rich tooling in Netbeans java ecosystem.

• This will expose NetBeans' code analysis via MCP Tool that AI tools (Claude code) can query.
• AI assistants can request safe refactoring operations
• Netbeans MCP can Export our project understanding in a format (simple json) AI tools can consume

NetBeans actually has advantages here:

• Our refactoring tools are rock-solid
• Call hierarchy and usage analysis already exist
• I feel Netbeans is lighter and more modular
• Already similar this concept was previously implemented with netbeans language servers for VS Code.

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PS: I'm not a plugin developer, I developed a jbang netbeans plugin (with AI) which I internally use (not even open sourced yet). I am mostly a long-time user who is a Netbeans and java loyal user and tired of choosing between good tools and modern AI assistance.

[Chris2011]

I also thought about MCP with NetBeans but atm I have a lot more stuff todo so at the end, you can akso start with AI assistent also with ChatGPT Codex with an empty repo and say: Make an MCP server for NetBeans and a client (NetBeans plugin). I think this will work and I would also do the same.

[ivan-velikanov]

Thank you Chris.
I guess I would also use claude code/claude cli ....
I am not a full time developer, I mostly use (java) coding as a general means of making my day to day office massive documentation, spreadsheet, and presentation work faster, automated and more AI driven for me. And I also don't have time at the moment. So most likely before I take this up, either you or somebody else might do it.

What I feel, not just me the whole community would really benefit from you is, if you could document some nice examples for netbeans plugin building which AI could read and refer to and understand common pitfalls, common guidelines, and best-practices etc. Generally claude is well trained, but since you have done so many plugins you would know better. I feel this is the best way you can replicate yourself (your work) through AI and others who use AI but are not so professional or into this field.

And to clarify and to set the context of my request - by examples I mean your current projects (various Netbeans plugins you have made) itself are nice and I or anyone could use it nonetheless as a reference for AI, there is nothing extra as such needed from your side.

But if you have something extra or particular in mind you could generally start organizing your work with this in mind that AI is good in replicating examples, and any amount of prompt-engineering cannot compensate the accuracy obtained by good examples/example code. They call this context-engineering. This would save new commers with a LOT of errors they wouldn't know how to solve otherwise, or claude would waste significant time and tokens to converge to the correct solution without such reference examples or guidelines.

Also, to be very honest, I really appreciate your work in Netbeans.

[Chris2011]

I'm just a little light with some time to do smth. If you see the history there are more who contributed regulary. If you want context specific help, you can also try codex from ChatGPT. No need to add smth, just add your repo or the fork of netbeans and tell what you want and play around.

I'm doing as good as possible to add new stuff but time is limited.

If you want, just start with smth as I did years ago :). Each help is welcome and appreciated.

[Chris2011]

@ivan-velikanov good news for you today. @emilianbold reached out to me and very long developer for NetBeans and he created this: https://github.com/emilianbold/claude-code-netbeans.git. I tested and it worked very nice. Spread the word! Also you can see a little video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0HN32AQu7w This is really really nice.

[ivan-velikanov]

Thank you, for the information, will check. I really appreciate this.

[oleg68]

Hello! Could you take a look at https://github.com/oleg68/NetbeansClaudeCodeGui ?

[ivan-velikanov]

look really nice. is there a dark mode. and also ... claude code conversations are heavy on normal terminal itself ... i wonder how heavy they would be on jediterm and inside netbeans. anyhow a very good work.

[oleg68]

I've never tried a dark mode in NetBeans. The plugin dows not control colors and use the colour scheme configured in NetBeans.

[oleg68]

claude code conversations are heavy on normal terminal itself

Most of conversation is done while Claude Code is changing files. The plugin graphic file-changing panel is more user friendly than the dialog in the text mode terminal. You can see the discussed plan in a live markdown preview.

i wonder how heavy they would be on jediterm and inside netbeans

Normally, you do not type in Jediterm, but in the prompt area or in the Delcline Reason field. The text editor features are better there than in a terminal or JediTerm: you can use navigation by mouse and the right-click menu. Also copy-paste, drag-and-drop features are available for you.

I asked Claude Code to renew a user manual. The screenshots are coming soon in the manual.

[Chris2011]

Maybe due to the accidentally leak of claude code infrastructure, we can reuse this and create a real UI for claude code in NetBeans :). Will try smth.

[ivan-velikanov]

I've never tried a dark mode in NetBeans. The plugin dows not control colors and use the colour scheme configured in NetBeans.

I think jediterm has a darkmode. I know for sure jeditermfx has so I am guessing jediterm also must be having .

Normally, you do not type in Jediterm, but in the prompt area or in the Delcline Reason field. The text editor features are better there than in a terminal or JediTerm: you can use navigation by mouse and the right-click menu. Also copy-paste, drag-and-drop features are available for you.

Nice

[ivan-velikanov]

@oleg68

Does Claude Code provide any API for integration with it's agent? I couldn't find any info.

yes there are a few custom apis, i guess the to find one would be probably reverse engineer the vscode plugin by just having claude code investigate and explain custom insider features and tight integrations.

[oleg68]

What API did you use for this example?

[Chris2011]

This is the url that was created: https://claude.ai/oauth/authorize?response_type=code&client_id=*** and the rest of the params, that I need.

[Chris2011]

It seems that this is not supported: anthropics/claude-code#37205
But tbh I'm not into it. I will upload the code soon and you can have a look into the vibe coded, messy code. I already said "make it better" And for the next iterations I will also do a code cleanup. There is an auth/OAuthFlow.java (not pushed yet) so maybe there is smth wrong or it is really not supported and I need to create a CLI subprocess to "fake" this.

[Chris2011]

Login is now working, it is a bit hacky, it needs the CLI atm. FYI. I will fix some bugs and will push the code soon.

You just see the history entry. Real chatting can't handle the folder/project/file/lines atm but will be working soon. FYI. My reference will be the VS Code extension and some improvements for our needs.

[ivan-velikanov]

nice.

[ivan-velikanov]

@oleg68
two features i would look forward to in the present plugin you have made
(1) darkmode ( intuitively i am quiet sure it is some simple config in jeditterm )
(2) i use --dangerously-skip-permissions very often. Not sure how to use this may be where we set the path of claude cli we can pass this argument.

[oleg68]

Right now I am not using any proxy, it plain simple claude. And it definitely works outside netbeans. Till the last version I did not have this issue, the last version also had some issue but not this.

Are you ready to install intermediate versions with more debugging for discovering your issue?

[ivan-velikanov]

Yes, sure. I might have a lag is responding, but yes thank you.

[Chris2011]

I would prefer now to switch this discussion to the original plugin discussion section :). BTW. I will also push my plugin soon, when I fixed some major missbehaviours.

[oleg68]

@ivan-velikanov

Could you download, unpack and try this intermediate build?

I agree with @Chris2011 . There are Issue pages for the Netbeans Claude Code GUI plugin. So, if the plugin doesn't work, it's better to discuss there, not here.

[ivan-velikanov]

nbplugins/NetbeansPluginClaudeCodeGui#29

[anandb]

I have been working on a coding assistant for netbeans, it uses the Agent Client Protocol to interact with OpenCode, it is meant to be a thin shim. I thought I'd announce it here since the topic is tangentially related, if anyone is interested this is the repo nb-complete, Any reviews or feedback would be much appreciated.

[Chris2011]

Can you please share screenshots :). Thx.

[anandb]

[oleg68]

I've finished active developement of the Claude Code GUI NetBeans plugin.

Now it's homepage is: https://github.com/nbplugins/NetbeansPluginClaudeCodeGui
The most recent version is 1.2.8.

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Main features are:

• NetBeans look & feel — the plugin respects the active NetBeans color theme and font settings, including light/dark mode
• Flexible UI customization — per-session terminal font and zoom (Alt+Scroll), configurable diff viewer placement, adjustable session list limit, and keyboard shortcuts for favorite prompts
• Graphical file diff — review every proposed file change before it is written to disk; accept, decline (with an optional reason), or interrupt Claude
• Interactive choice menu — Claude's Yes/No and multiple-choice prompts appear as a native panel instead of raw terminal text
• Prompt history and favorites — recall past prompts with Ctrl+Up/Down; save reusable prompts as favorites with optional keyboard shortcuts
• File attachments — attach files via @path tokens with auto-completion popup, drag-and-drop, and clipboard paste support
• Multiple profiles — run Claude Code under separate accounts or API keys for different projects, each with an isolated config directory, authentication, proxy, and model settings
• OpenAI-compatible proxy — route Claude Code through any OpenAI-compatible provider (OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, Groq, DeepSeek, Ollama, LM Studio, and others) via a built-in translation proxy; no changes to Claude Code CLI required
• Session management — start new sessions, continue the last session, or resume a specific past session; sessions persist across IDE restarts
• Markdown Preview — live-rendered markdown tab for plan files and MCP-initiated previews; includes a find bar (Ctrl+F) and font zoom (Alt+Scroll)
• Auto Plan Preview — when Claude writes a plan file, a live preview tab opens automatically as soon as you accept the diff
• IDE integration via MCP — open editors, diagnostics, current selection, and file operations are exposed to Claude via the MCP protocol so it always has full context about your work

[ivan-velikanov]

Good work. Very nice, good to see so many small-small features. It must have taken a lot of time for a single developer. I am very surprised by the amount of work that has been put into this.

However, right now I am into non-coding work, when i get back to coding work, I will definitely try this out. I have downloaded and installed it.

[richardchen874-sys]

The part that stands out to me is "AI Integration Discussion: Netbeans MCP for claude code". That is usually where usage and cost visibility starts to matter in practice, because the integration works at small scale but gets harder once real users, retries, and longer sessions show up.

I would track provider, model, prompt/output tokens, latency, retry count, and the feature or workflow that triggered the call, so cost can be optimized by task instead of guessed from monthly totals.

I am testing an OpenAI-compatible multi-model API layer around official Chinese models, so this kind of usage and cost visibility is directly relevant. For netbeans, is the bigger need exact billing-grade cost, or operational usage signals good enough for routing decisions?

[oleg68]

I am testing an OpenAI-compatible multi-model API layer around official Chinese models

The Claude Code GUI netbeans plugin allows you to use Claude Code inside Netbeans with any OpenAI-compatible API.

For netbeans, is the bigger need exact billing-grade cost, or operational usage signals good enough for routing decisions?

Of cause, MCP adds some small additional cost. You may test and compare them. The plugin has an option "Disable MCP integration" for such comparing.

[richardchen874-sys]

That is helpful, thanks. The “Disable MCP integration” option makes comparison much cleaner because it separates base model usage from MCP overhead.

I can test the plugin against an OpenAI-compatible endpoint and compare two runs: MCP enabled vs disabled, with the same task, same model, token usage, latency, and any compatibility issues noted. If you are open to that, I can provide a temporary test key/endpoint and share the results back here. My email is richardchen874@gmail.com.

[oleg68]

Could you share the results here?

[richardchen874-sys]

@oleg68 Yes, I can share the results here once I run the comparison.

I’ll keep it small and reproducible: same task, same endpoint/model, MCP enabled vs disabled, then record token usage, latency, and any compatibility issues. I’ll avoid posting credentials or private endpoint details, but I can share the measured behavior and setup notes.

[chrisjq]

FYI, as a bit of a research/hobby project a few weeks ago as I also found I am using AI a lot more across various providers so I created a general AI plugin for Claude, Grok and Github Copilot currently with an inbuilt MCP server implementing a lot of the NetBeans tools, if anyone want to have a play https://github.com/chrisjq/AICoderNetBeansPlugin , I submitted it to NetBeans as a plugin but first time submitting so not sure when it will get through.