The Pulse

JetBrains Ships PhpStorm 2026.3 With Air, a Workspace for Coding Agents

JetBrains’ PhpStorm 2026.3 adds Air, a workspace for coding agents and multi-agent setups. The release also adds PHP 8.6 support, Git worktree features and remote development features.

AI.info Team · Written with AI · fact-checked · 2026-11-06

JetBrains’ PhpStorm 2026.3 adds Air, a workspace for agentic development and multi-agent setups inside the IDE. In the company’s description, the release is its third major update of the year. The update also includes PHP 8.6 support and improvements to remote development, WSL and PHP code insight.

Air puts agent sessions beside project code

Air works with the coding agents and subscriptions developers already have, and detects agents already installed on a machine. Claude Agent, Codex, Gemini, GitHub Copilot, Junie and OpenCode are among the compatible agents, alongside other ACP-compatible agents. Users can connect detected agents with a single click or add agents from the registry.

Air supports existing provider subscriptions, API keys and custom base URLs without requiring a JetBrains AI subscription. Air in PhpStorm also includes free AI with the Junie Lite configuration, which requires only a JetBrains Account. In the workspace, developers can open agent sessions, project files and diffs in editor tabs side by side, and send feedback straight back to the agent.

Developers can anchor a note to a specific line in a diff or comment directly from code. PhpStorm’s code intelligence helps agents make fewer wrong turns, JetBrains says, and gives users tools to review changes before they ship.

PHP 8.6 checks reach the editor and agents

PhpStorm 2026.3 adds support for PHP 8.6, which JetBrains says will be released later this November. Developers can set the language level in the IDE settings or use the php requirement in composer.json. A new inspection reports constructors and destructors that return a value or use yield, and calls to the deprecated mb_ereg* functions are reported too.

The IDE adds code completion and type inference for PHP’s new functions, classes and APIs, and reports deprecated patterns and potential runtime errors. For projects targeting PHP 8.5 or earlier, it reports 8.6-only syntax and calls to new functions such as clamp(). For a readonly property with a default value, it offers the Initialize property in constructor quick-fix.

The checks work the same way whether the code was written by a developer or an agent. With PhpStorm’s MCP server enabled, agents can run the inspections and apply the quick-fixes themselves. The php-runtime-tools skill comes bundled with PhpStorm 2026.3 and gives an agent the project’s PHP interpreter.

Git worktree and terminal changes

PhpStorm can now copy local project configuration, including run configurations and other settings stored in.idea, into new Git worktrees. Developers can also list local and ignored files in.worktreeinclude for the IDE to copy, and configure a custom script to run when a worktree is created. A GitHub pull request or GitLab merge request can be opened in a separate Git worktree, and the current branch and uncommitted changes stay intact.

PhpStorm’s terminal now runs on libghostty, the terminal emulation library that powers Ghostty itself. The change improves support for keyboard shortcuts, emoji and styling in terminal applications, including Claude Code, Codex and Junie, JetBrains says. Terminal tabs can also be dragged into the editor area, even while a session is running.

Remote development and database features get updates

An integrated SSH connection flow lets developers connect to a host, start a development session and reconnect to existing sessions from PhpStorm. Light mode gives immediate access to editing, the terminal and file search while the remote IDE is still downloading, installing and launching; the session then transitions to full mode automatically. JetBrains IDEs now use OpenSSH for SSH connections, with expanded support that includes certificate-based authentication, hardware security tokens such as YubiKey and ProxyJump.

For database work, developers can run SQL from Air chats, view CSV data in the data editor and reference database objects with completion and Quick Definition support. PhpStorm 2026.3 also adds cross-database queries through a new Workspace data source based on DuckDB. The Workspace data source runs in memory by default, and each project can have one.