Cline
IDE / CLI Agent (Open Source)
https://cline.bot/
https://github.com/cline/cline
Features
Section titled “Features”- the leading open-source coding agent: runs as a sidebar inside VS Code (and now JetBrains, Cursor, Windsurf, Zed, Neovim) plus a preview CLI for macOS/Linux
- Apache 2.0 (core); ~5M+ installs, ~66k GitHub stars, 250+ contributors; BYOK / custom endpoints / local models — you control exactly what data leaves your machine
- Plan / Act modes with explicit approval controls: it proposes, you approve each file edit or command (or auto-approve trusted patterns)
- “shadow Git” Checkpoints — every AI change is tracked in a separate git repo so you can review/rollback what it did
- now ships as an SDK too (“autonomous coding agent as an SDK, IDE extension, or CLI”)
Summary
Section titled “Summary”Cline is the open-source answer to “I want Claude-Code-style autonomy but with the code and the data under my control.” It’s the first-party default for VS Code users who don’t want to adopt a closed agent, and its Plan/Act + checkpoint model became the pattern most other IDE agents copied for safety.
The 2026 position: it’s the open-source agent with the broadest editor footprint (VS Code → JetBrains → Zed → Neovim → CLI) and a real SDK, so teams can embed the same Plan/Act agent in their own tooling. The trade-off vs the closed agents (Claude Code, Codex) is raw frontier-model quality — Cline’s value is openness, auditability, and model freedom, not the strongest reasoning.
2026.09.08
Section titled “2026.09.08”Status: active — the OSS category leader. cline.bot is live; ~5M installs, v3.x shipping, SDK + CLI expanding. Apache-2.0 core (the JetBrains plugin is closed-source per their README). No negative signals; it’s the reference “open coding agent” in every 2026 roundup.