Continue
Ranked 17 of 41 coding agents by recommenders
Open-source AI coding assistant people recommend for its configurable checks, autocomplete, and local model support with Ollama. Common caveat: many reports of buggy plugin behavior in VS Code and JetBrains.
Open-source AI coding assistant people recommend for its configurable checks, autocomplete, and local model support with Ollama. Common caveat: many reports of buggy plugin behavior in VS Code and JetBrains.
30 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 18
- criticize it
- 12
- approval share
- 60%
Recommended in 6 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 18 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 6 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Configurable, focused checks product
“Continue is very focused on the use case of checks and gets a lot of the small details right”
Comment from 17 Feb 2026 in “Show HN: Continue – Source-controlled AI checks, enforceable in CI” “our checks product is powered by an open-source CLI (we think this is important)”
Comment from 17 Feb 2026 in “Show HN: Continue – Source-controlled AI checks, enforceable in CI” “the configurable part turns out to be the main bit”
Comment from 17 Feb 2026 in “Show HN: Continue – Source-controlled AI checks, enforceable in CI” Works in VS Code and VSCodium
“Continue on vscode with Ollama running (start it with "ollama serve") is great.”
Comment from 31 May 2026 in “Bye Bye Copilot – new pricing looks to be a joke” “The Continue plugin for VSCode gets all of this accomplished.”
Comment from 31 May 2026 in “Bye Bye Copilot – new pricing looks to be a joke” “help you code on vscodium with Continue. Pretty nice!”
Comment from 4 May 2026 in “Usage-based pricing killing your vibe, here's how to roll your own local AI” - Comment from 23 May 2026 in “Microsoft Drops Claude Code After Budget Overrun”
Works with local models like Ollama
“Continue on vscode with Ollama running (start it with "ollama serve") is great.”
Comment from 31 May 2026 in “Bye Bye Copilot – new pricing looks to be a joke” “It’s the only one that handles air-gapped setups properly.”
Comment from 9 Apr 2026 in “Best Open Source Offline AI Agent” Good autocomplete
“I've also made decent experiences with continue, at least for autocomplete.”
Comment from 4 Feb 2026 in “Claude Code: connect to a local model when your quota runs out” “best open source autocomplete in our view”
Comment from 24 Nov 2025 in “Sunsetting Supermaven”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Buggy, janky plugin behavior
“most of the plugins that try to do that are pretty buggy or broken (e.g. Continue.dev)”
Comment from 27 Dec 2025 in “Show HN: Mysti – Claude, Codex, and Gemini debate your code, then synthesize” “i tried the continue vscode extension, and it seemed kind of janky”
Comment from 27 Apr 2026 in “GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing” “the whole plugin was a buggy mess and it didn't work well”
Comment from 5 Jan 2026 in “I switched from VSCode to Zed” - Comment from 22 Dec 2025 in “A guide to local coding models”
- Comment from 25 Jul 2026 in “Open-weight AI is having its Kubernetes moment. Let's not ruin it”
- Comment from 16 Mar 2026 in “Ask HN: How is AI-assisted coding going for you professionally?”
Frustrating experience in JetBrains and VS Code
“that experience was a mess both in JetBrains IDEs, as well as Visual Studio Code”
Comment from 22 Jan 2026 in “Show HN: Sweep, Open-weights 1.5B model for next-edit autocomplete” “a lot of frustration with the Continue plugin in my IDE”
Comment from 25 Jun 2026 in “Computer use in Gemini 3.5 Flash” Ignores instructions and burns tokens
“even tho I told it no changes without my explicit go ahead, it ignored me.”
Comment from 13 Mar 2026 in “Shall I implement it? No” “8M token burned in 30 minutes. App does not work.”
Comment from 21 Jun 2026 in “Building Reliable Agentic AI Systems”
Other coding agents people recommend
The four most recommended other coding agents, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GitHub Copilot | 571 | 993 | 37% | 12 | 1 yr46 owners | — |
| oh-my-pi | 104 | 28 | 79% | 9 | 2 mo5 owners | Approved |
| Grok Build CLI | 66 | 114 | 37% | 6 | — | — |
| DeepSeek Harness | 63 | 28 | 69% | 4 | 1 mo5 owners | Approved |
| ContinueThis page | 18 | 12 | 60% | 6 | — | — |
What people said
36 of the 40 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Swapped Continue for Kilo Code.”
“There is the obvious alternative of still using it, including creating your own fork.”
“"Continue" (the vscode extension) worked horribly”
“a lot of frustration with the Continue plugin in my IDE”
“8M token burned in 30 minutes. App does not work.”
“it exited its funding round to the Titler octopus”
“I think Continue is the biggest yc one.”
“Continue helped but its now part of Cursor”
“Continue on vscode with Ollama running (start it with "ollama serve") is great.”
“The Continue plugin for VSCode gets all of this accomplished.”
“It recommended the Continue plugin for VSCode.”
“checked if Cursor and Continue.dev have the same startsWith parsing issue. They do.”
“put Aider/Continue/Cline in front of it”
“help you code on vscodium with Continue. Pretty nice!”
“i tried the continue vscode extension, and it seemed kind of janky”
“It’s the only one that handles air-gapped setups properly.”
“if you've used opencode/continue-dev”
“kind of broken regardless of models”
“even tho I told it no changes without my explicit go ahead, it ignored me.”
“they generated crap that's unmaintainable long term”
“I can imagine this would be very useful.”
“this is exactly what i needed”
“it's been working very well for me”
“Continue is very focused on the use case of checks and gets a lot of the small details right”
“the configurable part turns out to be the main bit”
“our checks product is powered by an open-source CLI (we think this is important)”
“We saw this play out beautifully with amp, kilo, roo, cline, continue”
“I've also made decent experiences with continue, at least for autocomplete.”
“easy to try out and see if it meets your needs”
“that experience was a mess both in JetBrains IDEs, as well as Visual Studio Code”
“the whole plugin was a buggy mess and it didn't work well”
“most of the plugins that try to do that are pretty buggy or broken (e.g. Continue.dev)”
“Continue.dev autocomplete sucks and is buggy (Ollama)”
“VC funded startups who's main plan is likely an acquisition”
“best open source autocomplete in our view”
“Isn't Continue supposed to help you do that, in VSCode?”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.