Cline

Cline works as an agentic software collaborator rather than a simple autocomplete tool. A developer can give it a goal, review its proposed operations, let it inspect relevant files, apply multi-file changes, execute tests, use external tools, and select models from many providers or local runtimes.

Because the agent can run commands and change a repository, use it on a branch with a clean status and explicit scope. Protect secrets, approve commands individually, review diffs and dependencies, validate migrations, run security and regression tests, monitor inference costs, and require expert review for authentication, billing, infrastructure, and production deployment.