JetBrains now recommends the Kotlin Toolchain for new multiplatform projects

Victoria Shinder08 October 2026, 07:161 min read

JetBrains says that with Kotlin Toolchain 0.13 it now recommends the toolchain for most new Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP) projects. The toolchain — formerly the Amper project — is a single command-line entry point for setting up the environment and creating, building, testing and publishing JVM, Android, iOS, multiplatform and server-side apps, with a declarative project configuration.

What is new in 0.13.

• kotlin new — an interactive setup flow similar to the Kotlin Multiplatform Wizard: first the application type, then, for multiplatform apps, the target platforms. kotlin init stays, now with the same behaviour but generating files in the current directory.
• iOS on a clean machine: clearer diagnostics for Xcode licence acceptance and first-run state; iOS simulator runtimes are downloaded automatically when needed, and a simulator is created if none exists.
• Android: missing Android SDK components are now provisioned on project import in the IDE, not only on kotlin build or kotlin run, aligning IDE and command-line behaviour. Validation now stops builds that still carry sample IDs such as com.example.app.
• Swift Package Manager: modules targeting Apple platforms can import Objective-C APIs through SwiftPM dependencies, remote or local.
• Download progress bars in the terminal UI, and the IDE sync status shown in the editor.

For AI agents. JetBrains says the automatic environment setup, declarative configuration and actionable error messages suit coding agents as well, and points to a Hot Reload MCP server and agent skills, installable with npx skills add kotlin/kotlin-agent-skills. It reports that in its benchmarks agents maintain toolchain projects more reliably and with fewer tokens.

The IDE side needs IntelliJ IDEA 2026.2.3 or Android Studio Rabbit 1 (2026.2.1) or newer, with the Kotlin Toolchain plugin.