Continue.dev

Continue.dev is an open source AI coding assistant extension for VS Code and JetBrains that provides autocomplete, inline chat, and code generation while allowing developers to connect to any AI model of their choice. Where GitHub Copilot locks users into Microsoft's model selection and pricing, Continue gives developers complete control over the AI backend.

The model flexibility is Continue's primary differentiator. Users can configure Continue to use Claude via the Anthropic API, GPT-4 via the OpenAI API, Gemini via the Google API, or local models via Ollama. This means developers can choose the model that best fits their quality, cost, and privacy requirements, switch between models for different tasks, and use entirely local models for air-gapped environments.

For teams or individuals who have already established relationships with specific AI providers, or who want to use local models to avoid API costs and privacy concerns, Continue provides a unified coding assistant interface across all these options.

The open source nature means the codebase can be inspected, the prompts understood, and customised for specific organisational needs. Enterprise teams can contribute custom context providers, change autocomplete behaviour, and extend the tool in ways that closed-source tools do not allow.

Continue Hub, the commercial offering, provides team management, shared configuration, and analytics for organisations deploying Continue across engineering teams.

The limitation compared to GitHub Copilot is that Continue requires users to set up and manage their own API keys and model configurations. The experience is more technical to set up and less polished than commercial alternatives, but provides significantly more flexibility for technically capable teams.