Cline
Cline
Cline is an open-source AI assistant that connects your VS Code editor and terminal through the Model Context Protocol (MCP). Its killer feature: it can dynamically create new MCP servers on-the-fly, allowing the agent to build new tool integrations for itself in real time. Handles file creation, editing, command execution, browser automation, and complex multi-step engineering tasks autonomously.
Free and open source (Apache-2.0). You pay only for LLM API tokens (BYOK).
Related platforms
Aider
Paul Gauthier
The original AI pair programmer for your terminal — Git-native and model-agnostic.
Crush
Charmbracelet
Charmbracelet's terminal AI coding agent — model-agnostic, BYOK, FSL licensed.
Goose
Agentic AI Foundation (Linux Foundation)
Open-source extensible AI agent for code, automation, and general engineering tasks.
gptme
Johan Henriksson
Fully self-hosted, open-source terminal AI agent — BYOK, local models, MCP capable.