Atlassian is significantly expanding Jira with features for AI-native software development. Teams can now control coding agents such as Claude Code, Cursor, and GitHub Copilot directly from within Jira. The Teamwork Graph provides the necessary context.
According to Atlassian, AI usage among engineers rose by 65 percent, while actual speed gains remained stuck at around 10 percent. The company identifies three pain points: a lack of enterprise context, unresolved bottlenecks outside of code generation, and the difficulty of integrating AI into teamwork flows. With an update, Atlassian aims to offer more capabilities for planning, orchestrating, and scaling agentic work within the software development lifecycle.
At the core is the Teamwork Graph. It connects work, teams, goals, code, and knowledge, enabling agents to act more relevantly and accurately. In internal benchmarks, agents using this context delivered results that were 44 percent more accurate, while consuming 48 percent fewer tokens.
For example, the Jira Planner has been updated, allowing it to draw context from the Teamwork Graph for complex projects. This includes, for instance, your codebase, Jira and Confluence history, and team context. You can then define and generate structured technical specs in Confluence, so that a developer or coding agent can build upon them.
Managing and measuring agents
Work items can now be assigned directly to Claude Code, Cursor, or GitHub Copilot, with Codex coming soon. Additionally, every paid plan includes a dedicated Jira Coding Agent that converts work items into pull requests. A separate view shows which agents are stuck and what’s awaiting review.
Also new are Jira for Slack, the Jira Planner for spec-driven development, and Loom video prompts that turn screen recordings into instructions. A DX report also aggregates the costs and token data for tools like Claude, Cursor, and GitHub Copilot.
It’s no surprise that GitHub Copilot and Cursor are standard features. According to a survey by The Pragmatic Engineer, 95 percent of respondents use AI tools weekly, and 55 percent regularly deploy agents.
Tip: Atlassian is rolling out Teamwork Graph for greater and broader impact