Definition
Plain language
An open-source AI coding assistant that runs inside a developer's editor.
As stated in the literature
An agentic coding extension for VS Code that drives an LLM with shell and filesystem tool access, one of several MCP-aware IDE assistants whose local session histories are parsed by ADR.
Why it matters: It's one of the open-source agentic coding tools researchers can inspect end-to-end, useful both for everyday work and for studying how IDE-resident agents actually behave.
For example, a developer asks Cline to add input validation to a Python file, and it edits the code, runs the tests, and shows a diff inside VS Code.
Heard on the show
“All of the major agentic IDEs — Cursor, Cline, Claude Code — already log their session histories locally.”Episode 057 — How Uber Caught 206 Leaked Credentials With an LLM-Powered Security Stack