Rune (IDE) VS Continue
Verdict BUY IT BUY IT
The Reality Confirmed real via a substantial, genuine Hacker News discussion (199 points, 63 comments) directly on the official open-sourcing announcement — real community engagement, not just a vendor claim. The GitHub repository (unstablebuild/rune) is real and confirmed GPLv3 licensed, matching the announcement exactly. Worth noting for anyone searching: 'Rune' is also the name of two unrelated projects — Google's experimental security-research language and the separate 'rune-rs' Rust scripting language — this is neither of those. 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.
SHORT ANSWER
Rune (IDE): Rune (by unstablebuild) is a real IDE that was genuinely open-sourced under GPLv3, confirmed by real Hacker News discussion and a matching GitHub license — distinct from two unrelated same-named projects.
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.