Roo Code
Hacker ApprovedRanked 9 of 41 coding agents by recommenders
Free, open-source VS Code extension for AI coding agents, liked for agent modes, customisation and task delegation; critics say results depend heavily on the model and default prompts.
Free, open-source VS Code extension for AI coding agents, liked for agent modes, customisation and task delegation; critics say results depend heavily on the model and default prompts.
32 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 26
- criticize it
- 6
- approval share
- 81%
Recommended in 8 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not 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 carries the badge
- 26 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 4.3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 8 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
Works well in VS Code
“Roo Code in VSCode was working fine a year ago, even back in November 2024 with Sonnet 3.5 or 3.7”
Comment from 5 Feb 2026 in “Claude Code Agent Teams” “all the other plugins like Cline or Roo are working perfectly fine”
Comment from 12 Feb 2026 in “Claude Code Is Being Dumbed Down” “Cline + RooCode and VSCode already works really well”
Comment from 21 Dec 2025 in “A guide to local coding models” - Comment from 12 Jan 2026 in “Cowork: Claude Code for the rest of your work”
- Comment from 1 Jan 2026 in “2025: The Year in LLMs”
Agent modes and customisation
“RooCode was genuinely great (those various agent modes, vs just plan/act)”
Comment from 28 Apr 2026 in “Roo code shuts down, Team will focus on roomote agent” “Roo was a bit better because it offered more customisation”
Comment from 28 Apr 2026 in “Running Local LLMs Offline on a Ten-Hour Flight” “RooCode also allows you to have multiple roles”
Comment from 5 Nov 2025 on Hacker News Good task delegation and harness
“roo code has a good harness for that (but terrible default prompts for the agents)”
Comment from 23 Mar 2026 in “Show HN: Agent Kernel – Three Markdown files that make any AI agent stateful” “I find it generally "chews" the tasks I give it to then spoon feed into sub-tasks”
Comment from 7 Jan 2026 in “Opus 4.5 is going to change everything” “as long as it has task delegation I'm happy with it”
Comment from 14 Mar 2026 in “1M context is now generally available for Opus 4.6 and Sonnet 4.6” Free, open source, bring your own key
“allows you to use your own API key, so you pay per-token, not a fixed monthly fee”
Comment from 4 Jan 2026 in “Web development is fun again” “Roo Code is awesome and free and open source.”
Comment from 24 Nov 2025 in “Sunsetting Supermaven”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Weak default prompts and instructions
“roo code has a good harness for that (but terrible default prompts for the agents)”
Comment from 23 Mar 2026 in “Show HN: Agent Kernel – Three Markdown files that make any AI agent stateful” “KiloCode/RooCode/Cline are unable to give a model enough helpful instructions”
Comment from 9 Dec 2025 in “JetBrains cancels Fleet” Lock-in and shift to cloud
“RooCode essentially dumped their VSC plugins and went all in on the cloud”
Comment from 3 Oct 2026 in “Show HN: Offrun – manage every coding agent from one workspace” “they want to lock you in to their product”
Comment from 15 Dec 2025 in “Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (December 2025)”
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 |
| Roo CodeThis page | 26 | 6 | 81% | 8 | — | Approved |
What people said
40 of the 50 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“RooCode essentially dumped their VSC plugins and went all in on the cloud”
“roo code, traycer are two worth checking out for this.”
“sadly RooCode got retired, liked their UI/UX a lot too”
“personally I also liked RooCode of which KiloCode is a fork”
“I personally liked RooCode more than both the Cline and KiloCode for Visual Studio Code”
“Roo was a bit better because it offered more customisation”
“RooCode was genuinely great (those various agent modes, vs just plan/act)”
“early implementations of code assistants, like Roo or Aider”
“roo code has a good harness for that (but terrible default prompts for the agents)”
“Roocode has a nice feature called .worktreeinclude”
“as long as it has task delegation I'm happy with it”
“found Cline/RooCode/KiloCode in VSC to be pretty good, while letting me preserve my existing setup”
“Roocode's contextual engine handles what to work on”
“all the other plugins like Cline or Roo are working perfectly fine”
“RooCode is a better version of ClaudeCode than ClaudeCode.”
“We saw this play out beautifully with amp, kilo, roo, cline, continue”
“Roo Code in VSCode was working fine a year ago, even back in November 2024 with Sonnet 3.5 or 3.7”
“works great with Roo Code for local development.”
“pure coding tasks work better through aider or Roo Code”
“there's no good way for me to hook up an autocomplete model”
“I've heard great things about Roo/Cline/KiloCode”
“I have that working via Roo Code in VS code”
“be it with OpenCode or Copilot or Cline/RooCode/KiloCode”
“I find it generally "chews" the tasks I give it to then spoon feed into sub-tasks”
“For most other stuff I prefer Cline/RooCode/KiloCode”
“allows you to use your own API key, so you pay per-token, not a fixed monthly fee”
“the maintainer has reported some bans”
“kilocode, cline, roo work fine”
“Probably one of the most user friendly ways to do that.”
“Cline/RooCode/KiloCode are cool for chat and agentic development”
“Cline + RooCode and VSCode already works really well”
“they want to lock you in to their product”
“KiloCode/RooCode/Cline in VSC which are nice, but might miss out on some more specific tools”
“via their free API and the Roo Code VSCode extension, and it's impressive”
“KiloCode/RooCode/Cline are unable to give a model enough helpful instructions”
“Roo Code is awesome and free and open source.”
“Fewer tool call failures with RooCode”
“I had a lot of issues with Qwen models when it comes to RooCode/Cline”
“RooCode also allows you to have multiple roles”
“I've been having good results with Roo Code/Cline + Claude Code as the provider”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.