Install Cline v3.82: Autonomous Coding Agent Setup Guide

The question I keep getting from developers evaluating agentic coding tools: “If I install Cline, am I locked into one AI provider, one editor, one billing model?” No. But the setup has enough sharp edges that a quick answer doesn’t cut it.

Cline is an open-source autonomous coding agent that reads your codebase, edits files, and runs terminal commands – one approval at a time. Apache 2.0, 5M+ installs, 61.2k GitHub stars as of the DeployHQ guide. The current release is v3.82 (May 1, 2026), which introduced the new Cline CLI with a full Text User Interface – a significant shift from the extension-only model most guides still describe.

System requirements

Miss VSCode 1.93 and you lose shell integration – the feature that lets Cline read what your terminal actually outputs. Without it, the agent is flying half-blind. That’s the real floor, not just a nice-to-have.

Older editors fall back to a degraded mode. Cline can still suggest edits, but it can’t confirm whether a command succeeded – which breaks the feedback loop that makes agentic coding actually useful.

Install the VS Code extension

Search “cline” in the Extensions panel and you’ll see forks. The official extension ID is still saoudrizwan.claude-dev – turns out it never changed after the rebrand from “Claude Dev” to Cline (confirmed by the VS Code Marketplace listing). Verify the publisher before clicking Install.

1. Open VS Code (or Cursor, VSCodium, Windsurf).
2. Extensions panel: Ctrl+Shift+X (or Cmd+Shift+X).
3. Search Cline. Publisher must read saoudrizwan. Click Install.
4. Click the Cline icon in the Activity Bar.

Windsurf and VSCodium pull from Open VSX – same extension, different registry. Zed and Neovim connect via the Agent Client Protocol (ACP); install the CLI first, then enable the agent integration in the editor settings. Per the official Cline docs, ACP is a Cline-led standard designed specifically for this cross-editor use case.

Install the CLI (headless / CI use)

The size dropped from ~640MB to ~285MB. SDK v0.0.65 is why – Claude Code and Codex providers are now optional and loaded on demand instead of bundled (per the GitHub releases page). If your existing install still shows the old footprint, uninstall and reinstall – the pruning doesn’t apply retroactively.

# Install globally via npm
npm install -g cline

# Authorize - opens app.cline.bot in your browser
cline auth

# Check version
cline --version

# Start an interactive session in the current directory
cline

This is the path to reach for when you want cron jobs, CI pipelines, or SSH-only workflows. The TUI introduced in v3.82 makes it actually usable in those contexts – previous CLI attempts were minimal wrappers, not a proper interactive shell.

Pick your provider

Three tiers. The right one depends on whether you have existing API credits and how much you’ll actually use it.

Watch out: Starting with ClinePass and switching to bring-your-own-key mid-project means reconfiguring model IDs. The CLI and extension will silently keep using the last-selected model until you restart. Do the switch at a clean project boundary.

Option A – ClinePass (subscription): $9.99/month (first month $4.99 as of May 2026 – check cline.bot/cline-pass for current pricing). Gives 2-5x the rate limit on open-weight models from Z.ai, Moonshot, DeepSeek, MiniMax, MiMo, and Qwen. Good if you don’t have existing API credits anywhere.

Option B – Cline provider (pay-as-you-go): Broader model list, per-token billing, no subscription. Better for irregular usage – you only pay for what you run.

Option C – Bring your own key: OpenRouter, Anthropic, OpenAI, Google Gemini, AWS Bedrock, Azure, GCP Vertex, any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, or a local Ollama instance (per the GitHub README). Cheapest if credits are already sitting in one of those accounts.

To configure in the extension: gear icon in the Cline sidebar → set API Provider → paste your key → pick a model. In the CLI: run /settings inside an interactive session.

Verify it actually works

A green install badge means nothing. Run a real task.

1. Open a small test project.
2. Toggle to Plan Mode in the Cline sidebar.
3. Type: List all files in this project and explain what each does.
4. Confirm Cline reads files without errors and returns a summary.
5. Switch to Act Mode. Ask it to create a README.md. Approve the write.

Plan Mode reads the codebase and proposes a strategy – no file edits, no shell commands. Act Mode executes. If both complete end-to-end, the install is healthy. The git-based checkpoint system tracks every tool execution; type /undo in the CLI or use the checkpoint UI in VS Code to roll back any step.

The gotchas

The 5-hour ClinePass window. The “2-5x rate limits” headline is real but incomplete. ClinePass is also subject to 5-hour rolling, weekly, and monthly limits (listed in the StudentOffers terms for the plan). Two or three hours of aggressive agentic looping – the kind where Cline is running tests and fixing failures in a cycle – will surface the rolling cap before you hit the monthly one. Exact numbers vary by model and aren’t published.

Shared state between CLI and extension. First launch exports native storage to ~/.cline/data/. Install both surfaces and you get shared MCP servers, custom Rules, and provider config for free. Wipe that directory to “start fresh” and you wipe both simultaneously – no undo, no warning prompt.

Ignoring sensitive files. Create a .clineignore at the repo root before your first Act Mode run. It works like .gitignore – patterns you list there are off-limits to Cline. Secrets, private keys, customer data. Do this before Act Mode, not after.

That raises a question worth sitting with before you go further: how much do you actually trust an autonomous agent with write access to your repo? Plan Mode first, narrow scope, one task at a time – that’s not caution theater, it’s how you learn where the model’s judgment is reliable and where it isn’t. There’s no shortcut to that calibration.

Common install errors

• “Cline icon not showing in Activity Bar” – restart the IDE. Activation events don’t always fire on the first install.
• “Shell integration unavailable” or terminal output not captured – VSCode is below 1.93. Upgrade. No config workaround exists.
• npm install fails with EACCES – global install without permissions. Use nvm (recommended) or run with sudo (not recommended on shared machines).
• OAuth loop when authing the CLI – kill the browser tab, then run cline auth again from a fresh terminal session.

Upgrade and uninstall

Extension auto-updates through the marketplace. For the CLI: npm update -g cline. Config lives in ~/.cline/data/ and carries across versions – no migration steps between minor releases.

Full removal:

# Remove the CLI
npm uninstall -g cline

# Remove the extension
code --uninstall-extension saoudrizwan.claude-dev

# Wipe local state, MCP servers, checkpoints - irreversible
rm -rf ~/.cline

That last command takes the git-based checkpoints with it. Anything not committed to your actual repo is gone.

FAQ

Do I need to pay to use Cline?

No. The extension and CLI are free and open source (Apache 2.0). You pay only for AI inference – ClinePass, pay-as-you-go, or your own API key. The code itself costs nothing.

Can I run Cline fully offline with a local model?

Cline supports Ollama, so you can point it at a locally-running model. But agentic coding is context-hungry – reading a multi-file codebase, tracking a plan, generating patches – and most local models under 32B parameters lose the thread across long sessions. If you have 64GB+ RAM and are running something like Qwen 2.5 Coder 32B, it works for smaller, well-scoped tasks. For anything larger, a hosted model will give you better results even at modest usage levels. “Offline” here means your code stays local, not that you skip inference costs entirely if using a hosted API.

What’s the difference between Cline and Roo Code?

Roo Code is a fork of the original Cline codebase. Updates and security fixes land on mainline Cline first. ClinePass, JetBrains support, and the ACP protocol all ship around mainline – not the forks. Pick Roo Code only if a specific feature it adds matters more to you than staying on the upstream release track.

Next step: open your terminal, run npm install -g cline, then cline auth. Point it at a scratch repo. Give it one narrowly scoped task in Plan Mode first – that’s how you build calibration for what to trust it with next.