Cline

Cline is an open-source autonomous AI coding agent. It is best known as a VS Code extension, and its GitHub repository describes it as "the open source coding agent in your IDE, terminal, & desktop" 1. Cline can read and edit files across a project, run terminal commands and plan work before acting, and it is released under the Apache 2.0 license 1.

Where Cline runs

• VS Code extension: an AI coding assistant inside the editor
• JetBrains plugin: for IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm, WebStorm, GoLand and other JetBrains IDEs
• CLI: interactive chat in the terminal, or fully headless for CI/CD
• Desktop app: a native app for macOS and Windows 1

How Cline works

Cline has two modes. In Plan mode it explores the codebase, asks clarifying questions and lays out a strategy; in Act mode it carries the plan out 1. By default every file edit and terminal command needs your approval, so you see each change before it happens. You can switch on auto-approve if you want it to run with less supervision 1.

Cline is model-agnostic. You bring your own model provider, with options including Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, OpenRouter, AWS Bedrock, Azure and GCP Vertex, Cerebras, Groq, local models through Ollama, and any OpenAI-compatible API 1 2.

MCP support

Cline is an MCP client. Through Model Context Protocol servers it can connect to external APIs and services and use tools beyond its built-in ones, from local servers or remote hosted servers 3. Remote servers are configured under mcpServers with a URL, optional headers and a transport type, where streamableHttp is recommended and sse is kept for older servers. An autoApprove list lets you pre-approve specific tools 3. Cline's own security advice is to install only servers you trust, keep secrets in environment variables, limit auto-approve to safe tools and review tool calls before approving them 3.

Project rules

Persistent instructions live in Cline Rules: Markdown files in a .clinerules/ (or .cline/rules/) folder in the project, plus global rules for all projects. Workspace rules win when the two conflict. Cline also detects .cursorrules, .windsurfrules and AGENTS.md files, so a repository set up for other agents works without duplication 4.

Publishing social content from the editor

Because Cline can call any MCP server, a team can manage social posts from the same editor it uses for docs and code. Publora, a social media scheduler with a publishing API, runs a remote MCP server at https://mcp.publora.com that accepts OAuth or a Bearer API key and exposes 18 tools for scheduling, publishing and analytics 5. Publora's docs do not include a Cline-specific page, but the generic HTTP client configuration it documents maps onto Cline's remote server settings 5 3. API and MCP access are included on Publora's free plan 6.

A sensible workflow: keep brand and platform rules in .clinerules or AGENTS.md, ask Cline in Plan mode to draft posts from a changelog or article, then let it create them as drafts in Act mode while you approve each tool call. Leaving the create and schedule tools out of autoApprove keeps a human in the loop before anything is published.