An in-depth look at the principles of Cline and a free guide to using Gemini-Exp-1206 to replace Cursor.

In the development work, the daily trivial code modification, command execution and context switching often make us exhausted. Recently, I experienced a VS Code extension designed for developers - theClineIt feels like you have an intelligent assistant that understands code, and the experience is very close to that of Cursor, with the addition of Google's free-to-use models!Gemini-Exp-1206,

Ratings come to 1 million community votes, https://web.lmarena.ai/leaderboard

https://lmarena.ai/ and is even ranked first in terms of code, surpassing the existence of o1!

So basically, it can be done cursor The ping-tai lah. Today, I want to talk to you about Cline is how a deep combination of AI models and toolchain can help us automate development tasks, and how to fit him with theGemini-Exp-1206The.

What is Cline?

Simply put, Cline^[1]It is a model that combines large language models (LLMs, such as the Claude Cline is a plugin for VS Code (3.5) that automates tasks by invoking tools such as creating and modifying files, executing commands, analyzing context, etc. It automates tasks such as creating and modifying files, executing commands, analyzing context, etc. Cline's core philosophy is "human-computer collaboration", where you remain in control of the project and it acts as an intimate assistant to take care of the nitty-gritty details.

Core Principles of Cline

1. Intelligent task execution: tools + models work well together

Cline is not a real sense of multi-agent collaboration, but through a powerful LLM agent (Agent) as the "brain", with a series of tools to complete specific operations. The process looks like this:

Example:

• - You tell Cline, "Help me generate a template for a new page."
• - The Agent parses your request, generates the contents of the file in context, and calls the write_to_file tool to save the file.

This task execution model avoids complex collaboration between multiple Agents, while being safer and more efficient.

2. How do I automate commands?

Cline's Agent can invoke command-line operations directly, thanks to vscode 1.9.3.^[2] version provides the ability to execute a shell and capture the output.

This is especially useful for scenarios such as debugging, running services, installing dependencies, etc.

Execute the process:

1. 1. The command generates::
   Agent generates commands based on tasks. For example:

   npm run dev

2. 2. Human Confirmation::
   All actions are first shown to you in the VS Code interface, such as the content of the command and what it does, and only when you click "Confirm" will it be executed.
3. 3. Real-time capture output::
   During execution, Cline captures logs using VS Code's terminal interface. If a run fails, the Agent provides suggestions for improvement or attempts to fix the error based on the contents of the log.

3. How do I automatically generate and modify documents?

File manipulation is Cline's forte, whether it's creating files or modifying existing code, it's done with great care.

• - File Creation:
  Suppose you need to create a new file src/newFile.jsCline's Agent calls the tool in this way:

  src/newFile.js
    
    // Auto-generated file content
    const helloWorld = () => console.log('Hello, World!');
    </content
  </write_to_file

• - Document Modification:
  If you want to replace a variable in your code, Agent generates a replacement tool call:

  src/oldFile.js
    const oldValue = 42;
    const newValue = 100;
  </replace_in_file

  Once the changes are complete, you can see a comparison in VS Code's diff window to make sure the changes are as expected.

4. Contextual analysis is the foundation of intelligent operations

Another highlight of Cline is its deep understanding of context, whether it's a project's directory structure or specific code, which it can quickly access and analyze.

It's contextual analysis methods include:

1. 1. Document structure analysis:
   utilization list_files The tool recursively fetches the directory structure and locates the relevant files in the project using regular expressions.
2. 2. Code semantic analysis:
   Extract function, class, and method definitions from the code to help Agent understand the core logic of the project.
3. 3. Problem diagnosis:
   Calls VS Code's Problem Panel API to catch compilation errors or warnings and then automatically generates suggestions for fixing them.
4. 4. Dynamically expanding contexts:
   leverage Model Context Protocol(MCP), Cline can load external data, such as API documentation, log files, etc., to further enrich the contextual information.

III. Why is Cline's design safer?

Security is one of the biggest concerns for developers when introducing AI automation.Cline is designed to address this pain point well:

1. 1. Operation is controlled:
   All critical operations require explicit user approval, such as command execution, file modification, etc.
2. 2. Sandbox mechanism:
   The Agent is not able to operate the system directly, and all tasks are accomplished through the tool interface to avoid potentially destructive behavior.
3. 3. Context window restrictions:
   Even for large projects, Cline streamlines contextual information to ensure the efficiency and accuracy of LLM calculations.

IV. Cline's technology stack

The implementation of Cline is based on the following technologies:

V. Comparison with similar tools

To make it easier to understand, we've put together a table comparing the key differences between Cline and other similar tools:

VI. How to configure on Gemini-Exp-1206

First, we open the Google AI studio^[3]Then, we request an api key and copy it.

Google AI studio

Then we switch to the cline plugin's settings in the red box, and the poll results show that that thinking-exp model is as good as O1, if not better, so you can choose for yourself.

cline configuration

The Id of the model is filled in:

baseUrl ^[4]Please refer to see the end of the article.

With Cline, code generation, automated debugging, and command execution are no longer burdensome, and it's only a matter of time before development efficiency improves!

If you haven't tried it yet, you might as well install one and try it out, it might make you redefine the meaning of "Intelligent Development Assistant".

Citation Links

[1] Cline. https://github.com/cline/cline
[2] vscode1.9.3. https://code.visualstudio.com/updates/v1_93#_terminal-shell-integration-api
[3] Google AI studio. https://aistudio.google.com/prompts/new_chat
[4] baseUrl : https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/openai