Continue | The Open-Source AI Autopilot for Software Development

In the rapidly evolving landscape of software development, AI-powered tools have shifted from novelty to necessity. Developers are constantly seeking ways to accelerate their workflows, reduce boilerplate code, and tackle complex problems more efficiently. This has led to the rise of the AI Coding Assistant, a new class of developer tools designed to act as a pair programmer. However, this new paradigm brings new challenges: data privacy concerns, vendor lock-in with proprietary models, and a lack of customizability. What if you could have all the power of a state-of-the-art AI assistant without sacrificing control? This is the promise of Continue, the open-source AI autopilot for software development. It’s an IDE extension built for developers who demand power, privacy, and personalization, allowing you to connect to any LLM and tailor the experience to your exact needs.

What is Continue? Your Customizable AI Autopilot

At its core, Continue is an IDE extension available for both VS Code and JetBrains that integrates deeply into your development environment. But calling it just another AI chat tool would be an understatement. Continue is designed to be an “autopilot,” a system that understands the full context of your work—your open files, your terminal history, your debugging sessions, and even your project’s architectural patterns. It uses this deep context to provide highly relevant suggestions, generate precise code, and help you navigate your codebase with unprecedented speed. It’s not just about asking questions and getting code snippets; it’s about creating a seamless, intelligent partnership between you and your AI assistant, right within the editor where you spend most of your time.

The most significant differentiator for Continue is its unwavering commitment to being open source. In a world where many developer tools operate as black boxes, Continue offers complete transparency. You can inspect the source code, understand how it works, and be confident that your proprietary code and data remain private. This open-source foundation empowers developers and organizations to self-host the entire platform, ensuring that no sensitive information ever leaves their secure infrastructure. It fosters a community-driven approach to innovation, where users can contribute, suggest features, and collectively build the ultimate AI Coding Assistant. This philosophy of openness and control is woven into every feature of the platform, making it a trustworthy and powerful addition to any developer’s toolkit.

Unpacking the Core Features of Continue.dev

Continue is packed with features designed to integrate AI into your natural coding rhythm without causing disruption. Each capability is built on the principles of context awareness and deep customization, ensuring the AI works for you, not the other way around.

Intelligent Context-Aware Chat

The chat interface is your central command hub, but it’s far more intelligent than a standard chatbot. Using simple @ symbols, you can effortlessly pull in context from various sources. For example, you can type @file to reference specific files in your workspace, @terminal to include the output of your last command, or even connect to providers like GitHub to reference issues and pull requests with @issue. This “context provider” system allows the LLM to have a rich, accurate understanding of your immediate task, leading to answers and code generations that are remarkably precise and relevant. You no longer need to waste time copying and pasting code or describing your project setup; Continue already understands.

Seamless In-IDE Workflow and Editing

Continue excels at keeping you in the flow state. Instead of context-switching to a separate application, all interactions happen directly within your editor. You can highlight a block of code and press Cmd+L (or Ctrl+L) to open an in-line editing prompt, asking the AI to refactor, debug, or document it on the spot. The changes are streamed directly into your editor, allowing you to accept or reject them instantly. Need to build a new component from scratch? Simply create a new file and instruct Continue to generate the entire boilerplate, complete with logic and styling, based on your project’s existing conventions. This tight integration transforms the AI from a simple assistant into a true co-pilot, actively participating in the act of creation.

Ultimate Customization with Any LLM

One of Continue’s most powerful features is its model-agnostic architecture. You are not locked into a single AI provider. The configuration file makes it trivial to connect to any LLM, whether it’s a commercial powerhouse like OpenAI’s GPT-4o, Google’s Gemini Pro, or Anthropic’s Claude 3, or a locally-hosted open-source model like Llama 3 or Code Llama running via Ollama. This flexibility is a game-changer for data privacy and cost management. Enterprises can route requests through their private cloud deployments, while individual developers can run models entirely offline on their own machines, guaranteeing absolute privacy and zero latency.

Extensible Slash Commands for Custom Logic

To further streamline repetitive tasks, Continue offers customizable “slash commands.” These are user-defined shortcuts that execute complex, multi-step prompts. For example, you could create a /test command that automatically reads your selected code, identifies the framework (e.g., React, Vue, Python), and generates a corresponding unit test using your preferred testing library. This level of extensibility allows you to encode your team’s best practices and personal workflows directly into the tool. Setting them up is as simple as editing a configuration file.

Here is an example of how you might define a custom command in config.json:

{
  "customCommands": [
    {
      "name": "test",
      "prompt": "Write a unit test for the following {{language}} code using the Jest testing framework. The code is as follows: {{selected_code}}",
      "description": "Generate a Jest unit test for the selected code"
    }
  ]
}

Transparent Pricing: Open-Source Freedom vs. Enterprise Power

Continue’s pricing model reflects its core philosophy of accessibility and choice. The primary offering is completely free and open-source. This isn’t a limited trial or a feature-gated version; it’s the full-featured AI Coding Assistant. With the open-source version, you can install the IDE extension, connect to any local or cloud-based LLM, define unlimited custom commands, and leverage all the context providers. You have the freedom to self-host the entire solution, giving you complete sovereignty over your data and infrastructure. This is the perfect choice for individual developers, startups, and any organization that prioritizes control and wants to build a bespoke AI development environment without incurring licensing fees.

For larger teams and enterprises that require streamlined management and support, Continue offers a paid “Team” plan. This cloud-hosted solution builds upon the open-source foundation by adding features crucial for organizational scale. These include centralized configuration management, allowing administrators to define standard models and commands for the entire team, ensuring consistency and compliance. The plan also provides detailed usage analytics to help understand how AI is being leveraged across the organization and offers priority support to resolve any issues quickly. The Team plan is designed as a value-add service for organizations that prefer a managed solution, allowing them to focus on development while Continue handles the operational overhead.

Continue vs. The Competition: Why Open-Source Matters

When evaluating an AI Coding Assistant, developers often compare leading tools like GitHub Copilot and Amazon CodeWhisperer. While these are powerful platforms, Continue’s open-source nature provides a fundamentally different value proposition centered on control and transparency.

The key takeaway from this comparison is control. With proprietary tools, you are a user within their ecosystem. With Continue, you are the owner of your ecosystem. You decide which LLM to use, where your data is stored, and how the tool behaves. This is especially critical for companies working with sensitive intellectual property or in regulated industries where data cannot be exposed to third-party services. Continue is the definitive choice for developers and organizations that want to leverage the power of AI on their own terms.

Getting Started with Continue: A Quick User Guide

Adopting Continue into your workflow is a straightforward process that takes only a few minutes.

1. Installation: Navigate to the extension marketplace within your IDE (Visual Studio Code or any JetBrains editor like PyCharm or IntelliJ). Search for “Continue” and click “Install.” The extension will be added to your editor, and you’ll see a new icon in the activity bar.

2. Configuration: After installation, Continue works out of the box with a default free model. To unlock its full potential, you’ll want to connect it to your preferred LLM. You can do this by editing the config.json file. Click the Continue icon, find the settings gear, and open the configuration file. Here, you can add your models. For example, to add both a local model via Ollama and OpenAI’s GPT-4o, your configuration might look like this:

   {
     "models": [
       {
         "title": "Local Llama 3",
         "provider": "ollama",
         "model": "llama3"
       },
       {
         "title": "GPT-4o",
         "provider": "openai",
         "model": "gpt-4o",
         "apiKey": "YOUR_OPENAI_API_KEY"
       }
     ]
   }
   

3. Your First Interaction: Open a code file and highlight a function you want to understand or improve. Open the Continue chat panel from the sidebar. In the chat input, type Explain this code: @code and press Enter. Continue will automatically use the highlighted code as context and provide a detailed explanation. From there, you can ask it to refactor, add comments, or write test cases, all within the same conversational thread.

Conclusion: Build Smarter, Not Harder, with Continue.dev

Continue represents the next evolution of developer tools, placing the power of advanced AI directly into the hands of developers without compromise. By championing an open-source philosophy, it provides a transparent, secure, and infinitely customizable AI Coding Assistant that adapts to your workflow, not the other way around. Whether you’re an individual developer looking for a private coding partner or an enterprise team building a secure, internal AI platform, Continue provides the foundation you need. Stop renting your AI tools and start owning them.

Explore the future of software development today. Download the Continue extension from the VS Code or JetBrains marketplace, join the vibrant community on Discord, and see what’s possible when you’re in complete control.