Amazon Q Developer FAQs

Amazon Q Developer has been trained on 17 years' worth of AWS expertise. Therefore, it can help you get started with AWS services, learn about best practices when architecting and building your applications, find the right service for the job, list and describe AWS resources running in your account (in preview), and much more. For example, you can ask Amazon Q Developer, "How can I build a web application on AWS?" right in the AWS Management Console, and Amazon Q Developer will walk you through the steps and provide references where you can learn more.

Amazon Q Developer does not have complete visibility into the resources in your account, but it can list and describe certain resources you’re using (in preview), such as Amazon S3 buckets or Amazon EC2 instances. Amazon Q Developer will direct you to the best billing resources available but currently cannot provide billing information about your account or organization bills and costs. However, Amazon Q Developer can now help you retrieve and analyze cost data from AWS Cost Explorer (preview).

Amazon Q Developer can respond to questions in English.

Amazon Q Developer stores your questions, its responses, and additional context, such as console metadata and code, in your integrated development environment (IDE), to generate responses to your questions. For the Amazon Q Pro and Free Tiers, customer content, including code snippets, conversations, and file contents open in the IDE might be stored and processed to provide and maintain the service.

Amazon Q Developer Pro and Amazon Q Business do not use your content for service improvement.

Amazon Q Developer Free Tier may use certain content for service improvement, for example, to provide better responses to common questions, fix Amazon Q operational issues, for de-bugging, or model training. Content that AWS may use for service improvement includes, for example, your questions to Amazon Q, and the responses and code that Amazon Q generates.

The way you opt out of Amazon Q Developer Free Tier using content for service improvement depends on the environment where you use Amazon Q. For the AWS Management Console, AWS Console Mobile Application, and AWS websites, opt out by configuring an AI services opt-out policy in AWS Organizations. For more information, see AI services opt-out policies in the AWS Organizations User Guide. In the IDE, adjust your settings in the IDE to opt out.

For users who access Amazon Q Developer with the Pro Tier, your content is not used for service improvement, or to train any underlying foundation models (FMs). In the IDE, AWS might collect and use client-side telemetry and usage metrics for service improvement purposes for both the Pro and Free Tiers. You can opt out of this data collection by adjusting your settings in the IDE.

Unless explicitly opted out, content from Amazon Q Developer Free Tier might also be used to enhance and improve the quality of FMs. Your content will not be used if you use the opt-out mechanism described in the documentation. For more information, see Sharing your data with AWS.

To access Amazon Q Developer in the console, you need to first log in to the console, and then ensure that you have the appropriate permissions to use Amazon Q Developer. You can contact your administrator to enable your account. Once you are able to see the Amazon Q Developer icon in the console sidebar, select the icon to open the Amazon Q Developer window, and then ask AWS-related questions. For more details, see Getting started with Amazon Q Developer—Your expert assistant for AWS or read the documentation.

You can access the Amazon Q Developer conversational capabilities available in the console on a mobile device using the Console Mobile Application. When using the Console Mobile Application, you get account-level Amazon Q Developer Free Tier limits. To learn more about the Amazon Q Developer Free Tier, visit the Amazon Q Developer pricing page. You will not be able to access the Amazon Q Developer instance selection in Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) or the Amazon Q Developer network reachability analysis using the Console Mobile Application.

Amazon Q Developer is available in team chat rooms on Slack or Microsoft Teams through the AWS Chatbot. To learn more, see the documentation.

Amazon Q Developer can help you diagnose common errors in the Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon EC2, AWS Lambda, and Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) service consoles. When an error appears in one of the supported consoles, you can choose the Diagnose with Amazon Q Developer button next to the error to get context on what might have caused the error, as well as step-by-step instructions on implementing potential fixes.

To analyze the error, Amazon Q Developer queries information—such as AccountID, AWS Resource identifiers, or the error message—in the scope of approved policy/user permissions.

If you need more specific help or guidance, you can contact AWS Support. Amazon Q Developer integrates with AWS Support, so you can seamlessly connect with support agents from within the Amazon Q Developer interface if additional assistance is required. This option helps remove obstacles in your self-service experience. This integration with AWS Support is available to all AWS customers accessing Amazon Q Developer through the console, and it will honor the entitlements of the customer's support plan.

For users who access Amazon Q Developer with the Pro Tier, your content is not used to train any underlying foundation models (FMs). AWS might collect and use client-side telemetry and usage metrics for service improvement purposes for both the Pro and Free Tiers. You can opt out of this data collection by adjusting your settings in the IDE. For the Amazon Q Free Tier, customer content, including code snippets, conversations, and file contents open in the IDE might be stored and processed to provide and maintain the service. Unless explicitly opted out, content might also be used to enhance and improve the quality of FMs. Your content will not be used if you use the opt-out mechanism described in the documentation. For more information, see Sharing your data with AWS.

As of 4/30/2024, we are renaming Amazon CodeWhisperer as Amazon Q Developer. All the functionality of CodeWhisperer is now provided as part of Amazon Q Developer. Users of Amazon Q Developer can get generative AI–powered inline code suggestions in the IDE or command line, security vulnerability scanning, and security vulnerability remediation.

Amazon Q Developer currently supports VS Code and IntelliJ IDEs. To get started with Amazon Q Developer in the IDE, see Getting started with Amazon Q Developer or read the documentation.

Install the AWS Toolkit for JetBrains or VS Code through the respective extension or plugin marketplace. Then, authenticate with AWS Builder ID or AWS IAM Identity Center. After authenticating, Amazon Q Developer can be found in the activity bar in VS Code or the tool window anchored in the top right in JetBrains. For more help getting started with Amazon Q Developer, see Getting started with Amazon Q Developer

Relevant information about programming languages, frameworks, and tools being used for your tasks can greatly aid in obtaining accurate responses. Breaking down complex problems into smaller components helps in receiving more targeted assistance for the individual components. If an answer is unclear, you are encouraged to request clarifications from Amazon Q Developer. Please also consider experimenting and iterating on your questions and prompts, as programming often involves trying different approaches. With the Amazon Q Developer customization capability (preview), you can customize Amazon Q Developer to generate more relevant inline code recommendations by making it aware of your internal libraries, APIs, best practices, and architectural patterns.

Amazon Q Developer uses the following contextual information while answering questions: 1. Current conversational context, like questions asked and answers and code generated in the conversation panel. 2. The IDE context, including the selected code line, snippet, or functions in the file and the repository that the developers are currently working on.

When using Amazon Q Developer as an Amazon CodeWhisperer Professional user, Amazon Q stores user activity data related to your response to the answers and code suggestions (such as thumbs up or down for a response). CodeWhisperer Professional uses your content, such as code snippets, comments, and content from files open in the IDE. This content is processed by the service solely to provide and maintain the service. If you access Amazon Q Developer through plans offered at no charge, namely in the IDE with a CodeWhisperer Individual tier, then Amazon may use your questions or responses for model training. You can opt out of using content from Amazon Q Developer for service improvement by following the instructions in the documentation. Content processed by CodeWhisperer Professional is not stored or used for service improvement or for model training. For information about how CodeWhisperer Professional and CodeWhisperer Individual collect and use your data, see the CodeWhisperer Professional FAQs and CodeWhisperer Individual FAQs, respectively.

Just like with your IDE, you own the code that you write, including any code suggestions provided by Amazon Q Developer. You are responsible for the code that you write, including the Amazon Q Developer suggestions that you accept. Always review code suggestions before accepting them, and you might need to make edits to ensure that the code does exactly what you intended.

With the Amazon Q Developer Agent for software development, you can go from a natural language prompt to an application feature with interactive step-by-step instructions right from your IDE or with CodeCatalyst. Amazon Q Developer understands your workspace structure and breaks down your prompt into logical implementation steps, which can include generating application code, tests, API integrations, and more. You can collaborate with Amazon Q Developer to review and iterate on the implementation. When ready, you can ask Amazon Q Developer Agent for software development to implement each step.

Available as part of the AWS Toolkit for VS Code and JetBrains, Amazon Q Developer currently supports conversations in English, and the Python, Java, JavaScript, TypeScript, C#, Go, Rust, PHP, Ruby, Kotlin, C, C++, Shell scripting, SQL, and Scala programming languages.

With the Amazon Q Developer Agent for software development, you can go from a natural language prompt to an application feature with interactive step-by-step instructions right from your IDE or with CodeCatalyst. Amazon Q Developer understands your workspace structure and breaks down your prompt into logical implementation steps, which can include generating application code, tests, API integrations, and more. You can collaborate with Amazon Q Developer to review and iterate on the implementation. When ready, you can ask Amazon Q Developer Agent for software development to implement each step.

The Amazon Q Developer Agent for software development is available in VS Code.

The Amazon Q Developer Agent for software development in the IDE is available to Amazon Q Developer Pro customers, and Amazon Q Developer Free tier customers, with limits. See Getting started with Amazon Q Developer—Your expert assistant for AWS or read the documentation to learn more.

No. Developers can only start the process by telling Amazon Q Developer in the console that they want to make changes to their application. After the initial interaction, Amazon Q Developer directs developers to their preferred IDE or their project in CodeCatalyst where they can continue the same conversation.

AWS provides developers with services such as AWS Identity and Access Management Access Analyzer, Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) Network Access Analyzer, and Amazon CodeGuru to help verify code and configuration security. CodeCatalyst automatically creates deployment pipelines that use these tools to help validate that code changes are tested and safe to deploy.

Amazon Q Developer Agent for code transformation is available through the AWS Toolkit for JetBrains and VS Code IDEs.

Amazon Q Developer Agent for code transformation supports upgrades of Java version 8 and version 11 applications to version 17.

Amazon Q Developer Agent for code transformation is available to all Amazon Q Developer customers, with limits. See Getting started with Amazon Q Developer or read the documentation to learn more.

Amazon Q Developer is available in the console with conversational guidance capabilities to help you get started, research best practices, or choose the right service for the job. This capability runs in the US East (N. Virginia) Region, but it is accessible from consoles set to any commercial Region. Customers with an AWS IAM Identity Center instance in Africa (Cape Town), Asia Pacific (Hong Kong), Asia Pacific (Hyderabad), Asia Pacific (Jakarta), Asia Pacific (Melbourne), Europe (Zurich), Europe (Milan), Europe (Spain), Israel (Tel Aviv), Middle East (UAE), Middle East (Bahrain) can only use the Q&A capabilities of Amazon Q Developer in the console within its free tier limits. These customers cannot set up a Pro account for Amazon Q Developer at the moment unless they move their Identity Center instance to a different region from the ones mentioned. Accessing Amazon Q Developer is also available on mobile devices with the Console Mobile Application. Amazon Q Developer can help you diagnose errors in the Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, and AWS Lambda consoles in US East (N. Virginia), and US West (Oregon). Amazon Q Developer actions such as listing and describing AWS resources running in your account (preview), or retrieving and analyzing cost data from AWS Cost Explorer (preview) are available in US East (N. Virginia). Amazon Q Developer capabilities in the IDE including in-line code completions, conversational coding (Q&A), Amazon Q Developer Agents for software development and code transformation process data in US East (N. Virginia). Amazon Q Developer Agent for software development, auto generated pull request descriptions, and pull request comment summaries in Amazon CodeCatalyst are available in CodeCatalyst spaces in the US West (Oregon) region, and are accessible from and can deploy to all commercial regions.

The Amazon Q Developer reference tracker detects whether a code suggestion might be similar to publicly available code. The reference tracker can flag such suggestions with a repository URL and project license information or optionally filter them out. You can then more easily find and review the referenced code and see how it is used in the context of another project before deciding to use it. All references are logged for you to review later to ensure that your code flow is not disturbed, and you can keep coding without interruption.

As you write code, Amazon Q Developer analyzes the English language comments and surrounding code to infer what code is needed to complete the task at hand. Amazon Q Developer suggests one or more code snippets directly in the code editor, accelerating your work. Amazon Q Developer code suggestions are based on large language models (LLMs) trained on billions of lines of code, including Amazon code and open source. You can quickly and more easily accept the top suggestion (tab key), view more suggestions (arrow keys), or continue writing your own code. Always review a code suggestion before accepting it, and you might need to edit it to ensure that it does exactly what you intended.

Amazon Q Developer uses your content--such as code snippets, comments, cursor location, and contents from files open in the IDE--as inputs to provide code suggestions.

Your content is transmitted using the TLS protocol to ensure secure communication between your IDE and the Amazon Q Developer service. Content is encrypted in transit to prevent eavesdropping or man-in-the-middle attacks. For Amazon Q Developer Free Tier users, we might retain content for the purpose of service improvement, based on a user's settings. We store this content in a secured manner with encryption at rest and strict access controls.

Available as part of the AWS Toolkit for Visual Studio (VS) Code and JetBrains, Amazon Q Developer currently supports Python, Java, JavaScript, TypeScript, C#, Go, Rust, PHP, Ruby, Kotlin, C, C++, Shell scripting, SQL, Scala, JSON, YAML, and HCL. In addition to VS Code and the JetBrains family of IDEs—including IntelliJ, PyCharm, GoLand, CLion, PhpStorm, RubyMine, Rider, WebStorm, DataGrip, and Visual Studio—Amazon Q Developer is available for AWS Cloud9, the Lambda console, JupyterLab, and Amazon SageMaker Studio. Amazon Q Developer is also available for your favorite command lines, including macOs terminal, iTerm2, and the built-in VS Code terminal.

You can scan your code to identify hard-to-find security vulnerabilities and get code suggestions to help remediate the identified issues. Built-in security scanning is designed to detect issues such as exposed credentials and log injection. Generative AI–powered code suggestions help to remediate the identified vulnerabilities and are tailored to your application code, so you can quickly accept fixes with confidence. Security scanning is available for Java, Python, JavaScript, and for TypeScript, C#, AWS CloudFormation (YAML, JSON), AWS Cloud Development Kit (AWS CDK) (TypeScript, Python), and HashiCorp Terraform (HCL). Code suggestions to help remediate vulnerabilities are currently available for code written in Java, Python, and JavaScript.

As generative AI, Amazon Q Developer creates new code based on what its underlying models have learned from the code that they were trained on and the context that you provided in code and comments. While Amazon Q Developer is not designed to reproduce code from training data, it is possible that on rare occasions it will generate code that closely matches publicly available code. If Amazon Q Developer detects that its output matches publicly available code, the built-in reference tracker will notify you with a reference to the license type (for example, MIT or Apache) and a URL for the publicly available code. You can then more easily find and review the referenced code and see how it is used in the context of another project before deciding whether or not to use it. To ensure that your coding flow is not disturbed, all references are logged for you to review later, so you can keep coding without interruption.

Yes. In the configuration setting for Amazon Q Developer, you can deselect the Include Suggestions With Code References option. This will prevent Amazon Q Developer from making suggestions that include references to known licensed open source code. For Amazon Q Developer Free Tier users, this setting is available in the IDE. With Amazon Q Developer Pro, the AWS administrator can centrally configure this setting on an organization level from the console.

Amazon Q Developer can filter out code suggestions that include toxic phrases and suggestions that contain commonly known code structures that indicate bias.

Amazon Q Developer is designed to prevent suggesting code with security vulnerabilities, and as many security vulnerabilities are filtered out as possible. However, given the generative nature of Amazon Q Developer we cannot completely rule out code suggestions with security issues. Therefore, Amazon Q Developer comes with a built-in code-scanning feature that detects security vulnerabilities within your Python, Java, and JavaScript projects, including code suggestions from Amazon Q Developer and code written by you.

Amazon Q Developer was trained on various data sources, including Amazon and open source code. Amazon Q Developer has been trained and validated to generate code suggestions from English language comments. Given the various examples in the training dataset, it is possible that Amazon Q Developer might provide code suggestions from comments written in non-English languages; however, this is not a supported use case.

Amazon Q Developer for command line helps developers be more productive in the command line with contextual CLI completions, inline documentation, and AI natural language–to-bash translation. Amazon Q Developer for command line integrates with a developer’s existing command line so developers don’t have to change the tools they use to start benefiting.

While a user types in their command line, Amazon Q Developer shows inline completions and documentation for over 250 CLI tools.

For example, a developer can type “git” and see a list of all the git subcommands, options, and arguments, ordered by their usage recency. A developer could also type “npm install” and see a list of all the node packages available to install. Additionally, a developer could type “aws” and see a list of all the aws subcommands available.

Amazon Q Developer for CLI can take natural language text prompts (such as "reverse my most recent git commit") and convert them into instantly executable bash code.

To get started, run Amazon Q, insert a prompt, and then execute the bash.

Yes.
1. Run `cw` to open the settings page.
2. Select the CLI Completions tab.
3. Toggle the switch in the top right corner of the page to Off.

Amazon Q Developer for command line currently supports integrations with the following tools:
1. Operating systems: macOS
2. Shells: bash, zsh, fish
3. Terminal emulators: iTerm2, macOS terminal, Hyper, Tabby
4. IDEs: Terminal inside VS Code
5) CLIs: 250+ of the most popular CLIs such as git, aws, docker, npm, yarn (see https://github.com/withfig/autocomplete)
For support with Jetbrains IDEs (except Fleet), Alacritty, Kitty, and Wezterm on macOS, run cw integrations install input-method.

With the Amazon Q Developer customization capability, you can customize Amazon Q Developer to generate more relevant recommendations by making it aware of your internal libraries, APIs, best practices, and architectural patterns.

Currently, you can customize Amazon Q Developer recommendations on code bases written in Java, JavaScript, TypeScript, and Python. Files written in other languages supported by Amazon Q Developer (C#, Go, Rust, PHP, Ruby, Kotlin, C, C++, Shell scripting, SQL, and Scala) will not be used when creating the customization or when providing customized recommendations in the IDE based on your internal code repositories.

During the preview, you can use the customization capability to create up to eight customizations based on your internal code bases. You can keep up to two code customizations active at the same time.

Amazon Q Developer offers 2 plans: a no-cost Free Tier, and a Pro Tier priced at $19/user per month.
Between 4/30 and 6/30, you can try Amazon Q Developer Pro free of charge. Billing for your Amazon Q Developer Pro subscription will start on 7/1. To learn more, see Amazon Q Developer pricing.

Yes. As of 4/30, we are renaming CodeWhisperer as Amazon Q Developer, and all of the functionality that CodeWhisperer provides is now part of Amazon Q Developer. Users of Amazon Q Developer can get generative AI–powered inline code suggestions in the IDE or command line, security vulnerability scanning, security vulnerability remediation, and more. Learn more in the Amazon Q general availability announcement.

The renaming takes effect on 4/30/2024, with other changes, such as the CodeWhisperer console, taking a few more weeks to switch over to the new Amazon Q Developer experience. CodeWhisperer customers logging into the IDE will see the renaming already reflected.

All CodeWhisperer features, such as inline suggestions, security scans, and customizations, will still be available in Visual Studio, VS Code, and JetBrains, using the AWS Toolkit. All environments within the console that previously supported CodeWhisperer inline coding suggestions, such as Lambda and Amazon Cloud9, will continue to support that functionality.

If you’re a CodeWhisperer Individual Tier customer, you can subscribe to Amazon Q Developer Free Tier, and take advantage of the CodeWhisperer capabilities you’re used to in the IDE and CLI, such as inline code suggestions.

If you’re a CodeWhisperer Professional customer, you can still log in and use the CodeWhisperer console until 1/31/2025. Starting on 4/30/2024 you will be able to manually migrate to Amazon Q Developer Pro, which includes all capabilities offered by a CodeWhisperer Professional subscription, including authentication through IdC, organizational license and policy management, user activity dashboards, and code customization capability. A more seamless migration experience will be available in the next few weeks in the CodeWhisperer console.

Beyond familiar capabilities from CodeWhisperer, Amazon Q Developer also offers conversational coding in the IDE, or advanced capabilities such as Amazon Q Developer Agent for software development, which can save significant time required to write and implement entire features, document code, or scaffold a project with a simple prompt. Amazon Q Developer can also save customers months—even years—of time upgrading applications. Amazon Q Developer Agent for code transformation automates the complete process of upgrading and transforming code, reducing the time it takes to upgrade applications from weeks to days or even minutes. While Amazon Q Developer is excellent at code generation and guidance, it can do much more. It can help developers learn about AWS services and architectural best practices, diagnose service errors and networking issues, select instances, and optimize SQL queries and ETL pipelines. To learn more, visit the Amazon Q Developer pricing page.

If you’re on the CodeWhisperer Individual Tier, you do not need to migrate. You can download the newest version of the AWS Toolkit and when logging in, you will get the full Amazon Q Developer Free capabilities for the IDE. Amazon Q Developer will also maintain your CodeWhisperer IDE settings.

If you’re on a CodeWhisperer Professional subscription, you can continue to use CodeWhisperer without migrating until 1/31/2025. As of 4/30/2024, you can also manually switch to Amazon Q Developer Pro by first deleting your current CodeWhisperer application from the console, then creating an Amazon Q Developer Pro subscription and adding all relevant individual users.

You will not be able to create new CodeWhisperer applications or profiles beyond 4/30/2024. However, customers on the CodeWhisperer Professional subscription who already have a CodeWhisperer application and profile in the console can continue to add individual users to the application, subscribing them to the CodeWhisperer Professional Tier. To get started with Amazon Q Developer, see the Amazon Q Getting Started page.

Amazon Q Developer in the IDE will maintain your CodeWhisperer IDE settings, so if you’ve already opted out of sharing your content for service improvement, that preference is maintained. New Amazon Q Developer Free customers will have to opt out of sharing content for service improvement for Amazon Q in the IDE, if that is their preference.