Cline (formerly Claude Dev)

Cline is a VS Code extension that brings autonomous AI coding capabilities directly into the most popular code editor in the world. Originally known as Claude Dev, Cline enables developers to delegate entire coding tasks to Claude within their VS Code environment — creating files, editing code, running commands, and iterating on implementations.

Cline's power comes from its deep integration with VS Code's extension API. It can read your project structure, understand your workspace configuration, access your terminal, and make changes across multiple files simultaneously. This is not a chatbot in a sidebar — it is a coding agent that operates within your actual development environment.

The project's rapid growth — from a solo developer's side project to one of the most popular AI extensions on the VS Code marketplace — demonstrates the enormous demand for AI coding agents that work where developers already work. Cline has processed millions of API calls and helped developers build everything from simple scripts to complex full-stack applications.