Continue.dev is gone. Here's what actually replaces its VS Code + JetBrains combo

I already went through what happened to Continue.dev — acquired by Cursor’s parent company in June 2026, final release shipped, repository now read-only. This post is the practical follow-up: if Continue’s specific combination was what you actually relied on, where do you go.

The reason this migration isn’t a clean one-to-one swap is worth stating up front. Continue’s whole appeal was doing two things at once that almost nothing else bothers combining: full BYOK model freedom, and genuinely equal support across both VS Code and every major JetBrains IDE through one shared config file. Most tools pick a side. That means the honest answer here is a combination, not a single replacement.

If VS Code is your primary editor, Cline is the closest match in spirit — BYOK, open source, and since pulling its runtime into @cline/sdk, the same core now also reaches a CLI and a JetBrains plugin, so it’s inching toward Continue’s cross-editor pitch rather than staying VS Code-only forever.

If JetBrains support matters as much as VS Code did, Kilo Code is the more deliberate pick — it ships extensions for both VS Code and the full JetBrains family off one engine, MIT licensed, BYOK across 500+ models through a router with no markup. It doesn’t have Continue’s specific YAML config format, but it’s the tool actually built to treat both IDEs as first-class rather than one primary and one afterthought.

If you’re open to leaving the IDE model behind entirely, OpenCode is worth a serious look — the most-starred open-source coding agent right now, terminal-native, and genuinely provider-agnostic across 75+ options. It won’t feel like Continue at all day to day, but the underlying philosophy (never locked to one model) is the same instinct that made Continue worth using in the first place.

One thing that doesn’t change no matter which you pick: all three are BYOK, meaning none of them can be shut off the way Gemini CLI’s free backend was — you’re never depending on a company subsidizing your usage, just paying whichever model provider you choose directly. I wrote about why that specific property matters more than it sounds here.

If you want the short version: Cline for VS Code-first, Kilo Code if JetBrains parity is non-negotiable, OpenCode if you’re willing to rethink the whole workflow. None of them is Continue. That specific combination doesn’t have a direct successor yet — which might be worth remembering the next time a tool’s whole pitch is “we do this one narrow thing nobody else bothers with.”