[owendarko]

There are already a bunch of open source, free, and popular "AI coding agent" extensions for VS Code:

1) Cline (1.4mil downloads)

2) Roo Code (a fork of Cline, 450k downloads)

Still a drop in the bucket compared to Cursor in terms of # of users, but they're growing pretty fast.

Disclaimer: I maintain Kilo Code, which competes with 1) and 2) so I'm pretty familiar with this space/the growth patterns.

[dhc02]

I am constantly surprised how seldom aider is mentioned in threads like this. I understand that it's not directly integrated into the editor, but the "editor + parallel CLI tool chain" paradigm feels so natural to me because we drop to terminal for so many other parts of building software. If you haven't tried it (particularly the architect/editor modality), it's worth a couple of hours of experimenting.

[PantaloonFlames]

Aider doesn’t provide any interface that’s integrated into the editor tool, as you point out. That might be true for other similar side-by-side tools that I am not aware of.

But, if you tell aider to watch your files, you can drop a specially formatted comment into your file, and aider will see that and use it as a prompt.

So the integration is sort of “implicit”. Which sounds kinda like the cheap way to go, in comparison to the current brand name tools that have their own chat boxes, dropdowns with mode selectors (ask, edit, agent), and so on.

But look further into the future and an ambient interface is probably where we end up. Something where the Ai agent is just watching what you do, maybe even watching your eyes and seeing what you’re attending to, and then harmonizing its attention to what you are attending to.

But I dunno, i’m just guessing

[senko]

Tight editor integration means better diffs (right in your editor), easier context manager, and other convenience features that CLI-only tools can't have.

This doesn't mean that aider, claude code, etc. aren't very good tools, but it does make sense to distinguish between built-in tools vs external ones. A similar non-AI example is debugging or linting: IDE integration makes it much easier than using a separate tool.

[tomrod]

Continue.dev as well

[nick__m]

I happy to know that I am not the only one that know about continue.

[wkat4242]

It's used a lot by self hosters like myself because you can modify their plugin to talk to your local LLM.

[rizky05]

roo and cline also can use local llm

[wkat4242]

Ah thanks I might look at those too then. I'm not coding very much anyway though.

[htrp]

How are you differentiating from the cline/roo's of the world?

[boleary-gl]

Our plan is to be a superset of Cline and Roo's features (we already have all the major features from both) [0]

We also have our own provider, which means no need to bring your own API keys (you can if you like, but it is batteries included by default) and we're not charging anything on top of the API pricing. Instead of monetizing on individual developers, we want it to be free for them and make money eventually off enterprise contracts [1]

[0]: https://blog.kilocode.ai/p/roo-or-cline-were-building-a-supe... [1]: https://kilocode.ai

[alasano]

I can't find any reference to Cline/Roo charging anything on top of API pricing.

Not sure how they'd do it considering you bring your own API keys. Can you link me to a resource?

[oofbaroomf]

GP didn't say Cline/Roo charged anything on top.

[alasano]

The comparison table on the kilo site says "OpenRouter without 5% markup" and only puts a checkbox next to kilo.

[boleary-gl]

Yes - with our built-in provider, we provide all the models that OpenRouter provides but without OpenRouter's 5% markup. We provide them at cost (the AI provider cost)

[jychang]

Roo/Cline doesn't offer Openrouter, markup or not.

[UncleOxidant]

maybe you could answer a question about kilo usage: If I choose Google Gemini as the API provider and give it my Gemini API key, why does it say that I'm low on credits (and I get API request failures immediately)? As far as I understand gemini 2.5 pro preview is free to use. (and in Cline I'm able to choose Google Gemini as the API provider & provide my API key and it will successfully make API requests)

[hadesarchitect]

We added it to the issues: https://github.com/Kilo-Org/kilocode/issues/349

[hadesarchitect]

Hey, we can't reproduce it. Could you maybe jump in and give some more details? https://github.com/Kilo-Org/kilocode/issues/349

[hadesarchitect]

It looks like a bug to me. Did you report it on GitHub?