Cline
An autonomous coding agent that lives in VS Code — reads files, writes code, runs commands, and iterates until the task is done. Bring your own API key.
Overview
Cline is a VS Code extension that acts as an autonomous coding agent inside your editor — it can read files, write code, run commands, and browse the web to complete tasks you describe in plain English. Unlike Copilot or Cursor which primarily autocomplete and assist, Cline takes full agentic runs: you describe a feature, it reads the relevant files, writes the implementation, runs the tests, and iterates until it works. It supports any API-compatible model (Claude, GPT-4, Gemini, local models) so you bring your own API key and control costs. With 50,000+ GitHub stars it's become one of the most-used open-source coding agents, especially for developers who want agent behavior without switching editors.
Key Features
- Full file system access
- Terminal command execution
- Browser use for research
- Multi-model support
- Task planning and iteration
- Works in VS Code
- • Genuinely autonomous — completes multi-step tasks without hand-holding
- • Open-source with active community
- • Any model that supports the API works
- • API costs can be significant for complex tasks
- • Autonomous execution requires careful review before running in production codebases