Cline AI Coding Assistant: Features & Pricing

What is Cline?

Cline is an AI coding agent designed to operate inside editors, terminals, and CI pipelines. It provides coordinated multi-file edits and can execute terminal workflows so changes and commands are applied across a project.

The tool can analyze and help you understand codebase structure, dependencies, and behavior to answer questions about files and architecture. It includes features to refactor large codebases while keeping imports, types, and runtime behavior consistent across changes.

Cline offers a CLI for automation so recurring checks, updates, and custom workflows can run in scripts, cron jobs, and pipelines. It supports running long-lived processes such as dev servers, tests, and deploys, reacting to output as it appears.

The product is built to be model-agnostic and open-source, letting teams bring their own model keys or weights and choose from hosted or local endpoints. It also provides SDK hooks and plugin support to register custom tools, integrate databases or infrastructure, and connect agents to external services and chat platforms.

Cline Features

Coordinated multi-file edits

Cline can apply linter-aware, multi-file changes across a repository while tracking diffs and providing checkpoints. Users can review diffs and undo steps to keep refactors safe and consistent across imports and types.

Execute and react to terminal workflows

The agent runs bash commands and interacts with the terminal, observing output and responding as processes run. This enables orchestration of development servers, test runs, and deployments as part of an automated or interactive workflow.

Plan-then-act workflow controls

Cline separates strategy from execution by offering a Plan mode to align on a strategy and an Act mode to carry out steps. Teams can approve each planned step or enable auto-approve for unattended automation.

Repository rules and skills

.clinerules files let repositories teach the agent coding standards, architecture, and deployment conventions. This enables the agent to follow project-specific guidelines when making edits or running workflows.

Model and deployment flexibility

The product is model-agnostic and supports hosted and local model options so teams can use Claude, GPT, Gemini, local Ollama/LM Studio, or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint. Organizations may bring their own key or their own weights to match compliance or performance needs.

SDK, MCP, and plugin extensibility

Developers can extend the agent with an SDK to register custom tools and lifecycle hooks, and plug in MCP servers for databases, APIs, and infrastructure. This supports integrating specialized capabilities or running agents within broader systems.

Cline