ai-generative-app
Who Controls Your Agents? Building Vendor-Neutral Infrastructure for Agentic Developer Tools
Agentic AI is rapidly transforming developer tooling, shifting from passive assistants to autonomous agents capable of acting across the software lifecycle. Yet many of these systems, while marketed as open, still depend on single-vendor governance, proprietary extension ecosystems, and opaque AI integrations.
This creates a structural risk: as agents become more capable, organisations may lose control not only over their tools, but over the behaviour, data flows, and decision-making processes embedded in their development environments.
This session presents a practical alternative built within the Eclipse Foundation, a non profit organisation headquartered in Brussels and a long-standing European leader in open source ecosystems. Its governance model enables vendor-neutral collaboration and long-term sustainability, which becomes critical in an agent-driven world.
We introduce two complementary building blocks for agentic developer tooling:
- Theia AI, an open source framework to build and operate agentic capabilities within developer tools, enabling multi-LLM orchestration, Model Context Protocol (MCP) integrations, and full control over model selection, execution patterns, and data boundaries.
- Open VSX, an open source extension registry compatible with the VS Code ecosystem, enabling transparent distribution of agent integrations, curated marketplaces, and independence from vendor-controlled platforms
Open VSX has become critical infrastructure for the fast-growing ecosystem of VS Code forks and AI-first environments, reaching over 300 million extension downloads per month and supporting major tools such as Cursor, Windsurf, Google Antigravity and other agent-enabled development environments.
Together, Theia AI and Open VSX provide a reusable, vendor-neutral foundation for building and governing agentic developer systems. The session includes a live demonstration of an agent-enabled developer environment, showing how organisations can retain control over agents, extensions, and data flows in practice.
Format:
This is a flexible session, adaptable from 15 to 40 minutes depending on conference needs: structured talk with a live demonstration included in longer formats, illustrating:
- Integration of agent capabilities into a developer tool
- Multi-LLM setup, including local models
- Use of MCP for controlled context and tool access
- Control over agent behaviour and data flows
- Air gapped or constrained deployment scenario
Target Audience:
1) Software engineers and tech leads interested in AI-assisted development and local LLM setups 2) Developer tool builders (DevEx, developer productivity, platform teams) building IDEs and domain specific tools 3) Architects evaluating controlled AI integration, including air gapped deployments 4) Open source contributors interested in Open VSX, extensible AI tooling ecosystems
Key learnings:
- Understand Eclipse Theia as an open source platform to build developer tools, not only IDEs
- Learn how Theia AI structures AI capabilities: chat, completions, MCP and agent workflows as reusable building blocks
- See a real, fully air gapped setup using local LLMs, and what it changes for privacy and compliance
- Discover how Open VSX enables an open extension ecosystem for internal and commercial distributions
- Take away practical ideas to adapt this approach for your own developer tool, workflow, or product
Target Audience:
- CIO, CTO, and heads of engineering responsible for developer tooling strategy and long-term technology choices
- Engineering directors and platform leaders, DevEx, developer productivity, internal tooling, evaluating AI-enabled tooling adoption
- Enterprise architects and security or compliance leaders concerned with governance, data control, and software supply chain risk
- Product leaders at tool vendors and integrators building VS Code-compatible or AI-first developer environments
- Public sector and regulated industry decision makers looking for vendor-neutral, sustainable open source infrastructure
Resources:
https://theia-ide.org/theia-ai/
https://open-vsx.org/
This creates a structural risk: as agents become more capable, organisations may lose control not only over their tools, but over the behaviour, data flows, and decision-making processes embedded in their development environments.
This session presents a practical alternative built within the Eclipse Foundation, a non profit organisation headquartered in Brussels and a long-standing European leader in open source ecosystems. Its governance model enables vendor-neutral collaboration and long-term sustainability, which becomes critical in an agent-driven world.
We introduce two complementary building blocks for agentic developer tooling:
- Theia AI, an open source framework to build and operate agentic capabilities within developer tools, enabling multi-LLM orchestration, Model Context Protocol (MCP) integrations, and full control over model selection, execution patterns, and data boundaries.
- Open VSX, an open source extension registry compatible with the VS Code ecosystem, enabling transparent distribution of agent integrations, curated marketplaces, and independence from vendor-controlled platforms
Open VSX has become critical infrastructure for the fast-growing ecosystem of VS Code forks and AI-first environments, reaching over 300 million extension downloads per month and supporting major tools such as Cursor, Windsurf, Google Antigravity and other agent-enabled development environments.
Together, Theia AI and Open VSX provide a reusable, vendor-neutral foundation for building and governing agentic developer systems. The session includes a live demonstration of an agent-enabled developer environment, showing how organisations can retain control over agents, extensions, and data flows in practice.
Format:
This is a flexible session, adaptable from 15 to 40 minutes depending on conference needs: structured talk with a live demonstration included in longer formats, illustrating:
- Integration of agent capabilities into a developer tool
- Multi-LLM setup, including local models
- Use of MCP for controlled context and tool access
- Control over agent behaviour and data flows
- Air gapped or constrained deployment scenario
Target Audience:
1) Software engineers and tech leads interested in AI-assisted development and local LLM setups 2) Developer tool builders (DevEx, developer productivity, platform teams) building IDEs and domain specific tools 3) Architects evaluating controlled AI integration, including air gapped deployments 4) Open source contributors interested in Open VSX, extensible AI tooling ecosystems
Key learnings:
- Understand Eclipse Theia as an open source platform to build developer tools, not only IDEs
- Learn how Theia AI structures AI capabilities: chat, completions, MCP and agent workflows as reusable building blocks
- See a real, fully air gapped setup using local LLMs, and what it changes for privacy and compliance
- Discover how Open VSX enables an open extension ecosystem for internal and commercial distributions
- Take away practical ideas to adapt this approach for your own developer tool, workflow, or product
Target Audience:
- CIO, CTO, and heads of engineering responsible for developer tooling strategy and long-term technology choices
- Engineering directors and platform leaders, DevEx, developer productivity, internal tooling, evaluating AI-enabled tooling adoption
- Enterprise architects and security or compliance leaders concerned with governance, data control, and software supply chain risk
- Product leaders at tool vendors and integrators building VS Code-compatible or AI-first developer environments
- Public sector and regulated industry decision makers looking for vendor-neutral, sustainable open source infrastructure
Resources:
https://theia-ide.org/theia-ai/
https://open-vsx.org/
