Cline Documentation — Open-Source Coding Agent for IDE, Terminal and CI
by Cline
The full manual for running an approval-gated coding agent across your editor, terminal and CI.
Overview
The documentation is organised as a manual rather than a product landing page. Getting Started covers install, authorisation, config and the free model tier. A Model Providers section documents Anthropic and Claude Code, OpenAI and Codex, Google Gemini, DeepSeek, Alibaba Qwen, MiniMax, Z.AI, AWS Bedrock across three credential paths, OpenRouter, Poolside, local models and 30+ others. Usage then splits by surface: the IDE extension, a TUI, a CLI with its own full reference, ACP, and a Kanban task board with remote access. The Customization section is where the real learning sits — Tools, Rules, Skills, Plugins, MCP, Hooks and .clineignore — followed by Core Workflows: Plan and Act mode, adding context, commands, checkpoints, subagents, Memory Bank, auto-approve and YOLO mode, Jupyter notebooks and multi-root workspaces. A large SDK section documents ClineCore, plugin authoring, custom tools, scheduled agents, events, permission handling, multi-agent teams and going to production, with API references for each. An Enterprise section covers SSO, member management, remote configuration for Bedrock, Vertex and LiteLLM, MCP server controls, telemetry, prompt storage and OpenTelemetry. Cline is Apache-2.0 with 67.3k GitHub stars and over 7,000 commits. Access is bring-your-own-key, pay-as-you-go, or a $9.99/month ClinePass, and the docs publish an llms.txt index so an agent can load the manual itself.
At a Glance
- Topic
- Agentic
- Level
- Intermediate
- Format
- Documentation
- Cost
- Free
- Duration
- ~3 hours for the core guides, then ongoing reference
- Provider
- Cline
- Hands-on
- Yes — code/exercises
- Certificate
- None
What You’ll Learn
- ✓Separate planning from execution using Plan and Act mode with explicit approval gates
- ✓Author .clinerules and Skills so project conventions persist across long unattended sessions
- ✓Wire MCP servers, hooks and .clineignore so the agent only touches sanctioned files
- ✓Run Cline headlessly in GitHub Actions for pull-request review and root-cause analysis
- ✓Build custom tools, plugins and multi-agent teams against the Cline SDK and ClineCore APIs
- ✓Configure 30+ model providers including Bedrock, Vertex, OpenRouter and fully local models
- ✓Use checkpoints, subagents and Memory Bank to scope and recover from long agent runs
Highlights
- •67.3k GitHub stars, Apache-2.0 and 7,000+ commits — one of the most-used open coding agents
- •Every file edit and terminal command waits for explicit approval by default; YOLO mode is opt-in
- •Documents four surfaces — VS Code, JetBrains, CLI/TUI and a Kanban board — not just the extension
- •An llms.txt index at docs.cline.bot/llms.txt makes the whole manual loadable into an agent
- •Enterprise chapter covers SSO, OpenTelemetry, prompt storage and MCP server allowlisting
Who It’s For
Best For
- ✓Engineers moving from autocomplete to supervised autonomous coding
- ✓Platform teams standardising one agent across an org with bring-your-own keys
- ✓Developers automating PR review and incident RCA inside CI pipelines
- ✓Anyone building a custom agent product on top of the Cline SDK
Prerequisites
- •Comfortable with a terminal, git and your editor's extension system
- •An LLM API key (Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, Bedrock, OpenRouter) or a Cline account
- •Basic understanding of MCP helps with the tools and plugins sections
FAQ
What is Cline Documentation — Open-Source Coding Agent for IDE, Terminal and CI?
Cline is an Apache-2.0 coding agent that runs in VS Code, JetBrains, a terminal CLI and a Kanban web board, and this is its reference manual. It is written for engineers who already use an AI assistant in the editor and now want plan/act approval loops, MCP tools, skills, subagents, hooks, scheduled runs and headless CI automation instead of chat-window autocomplete. After working through it you can wire Cline into a repo with enforced rules and run it unattended in GitHub Actions.
Is Cline Documentation — Open-Source Coding Agent for IDE, Terminal and CI free?
Cline Documentation — Open-Source Coding Agent for IDE, Terminal and CI is free to access.
What level is Cline Documentation — Open-Source Coding Agent for IDE, Terminal and CI for?
Cline Documentation — Open-Source Coding Agent for IDE, Terminal and CI is aimed at a intermediate audience. Recommended background: Comfortable with a terminal, git and your editor's extension system, An LLM API key (Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, Bedrock, OpenRouter) or a Cline account, Basic understanding of MCP helps with the tools and plugins sections.
How long does Cline Documentation — Open-Source Coding Agent for IDE, Terminal and CI take?
Expect roughly ~3 hours for the core guides, then ongoing reference. Most learners work through it at their own pace.
What will I learn from Cline Documentation — Open-Source Coding Agent for IDE, Terminal and CI?
You'll learn: Separate planning from execution using Plan and Act mode with explicit approval gates; Author .clinerules and Skills so project conventions persist across long unattended sessions; Wire MCP servers, hooks and .clineignore so the agent only touches sanctioned files; Run Cline headlessly in GitHub Actions for pull-request review and root-cause analysis; Build custom tools, plugins and multi-agent teams against the Cline SDK and ClineCore APIs; Configure 30+ model providers including Bedrock, Vertex, OpenRouter and fully local models; Use checkpoints, subagents and Memory Bank to scope and recover from long agent runs.
Topics
Sources
This page was written from 3 sources, 1 on domains other than docs.cline.bot.