Continue VS Cline
Verdict BUY IT BUY IT
The Reality As of 2026-09-11, the GitHub repo has 35,869 stars, 5,360 forks, and 955 open issues, with a commit within the last day. Its original "Show HN" launch post reached 298 points and 103 comments; a later post about its local tab-autocomplete feature reached 53 points and 3 comments — a strong initial launch reception that cooled for follow-up features, which is a normal pattern for dev tools, not a red flag by itself. As of 2026-09-11, the GitHub repo has 67,832 stars and 7,328 forks — the highest star count of any tool in this batch, despite the repo being created more recently (mid-2024) than Aider or Continue. Open issues (1,291) are proportionally in line with a project this size and this actively used. Its Hacker News posts scored more modestly (6 points and 2 points across two threads) than its GitHub numbers would suggest, which points to GitHub/word-of-mouth rather than HN as its main growth channel.
SHORT ANSWER
Continue: Continue is a free, open-source AI coding agent for VS Code and JetBrains that works with any model, including local ones. With 35,869 GitHub stars and a high fork count relative to stars, it has real evidence of developers actively customizing it, not just trying it once.
Cline: Cline is a free, open-source autonomous AI coding agent for VS Code with 67,832 GitHub stars — the fastest-growing of the major open-source coding agents by star count relative to its age (launched mid-2024). Its Hacker News presence is modest, suggesting its growth comes mainly from elsewhere.