Cline Hit 3.8M Installs By Asking Permission First

GitHub and Microsoft built AI coding tools that auto-complete your thoughts. A VS Code extension took the opposite bet: make developers approve every single change. Three point eight million installs later, Cline's human-in-the-loop philosophy appears to have resonated.

The Permission Model vs Auto-Complete

GitHub Copilot handles inline suggestions. Cursor ships a standalone IDE optimized for speed. Cline requires explicit user permission for every file modification and terminal command. This isn't a technical limitation—it's a design choice. The extension shows diff views before applying changes, asks before executing shell commands, and keeps humans in the decision loop even when that slows things down.

Copilot serves millions of developers with incremental completions. Cursor delivers power users a cohesive environment. Cline chose transparency, and 57.3k GitHub stars suggest a substantial segment of developers wanted exactly this tradeoff.

What 57k Stars Actually Represent

The metrics tell a story about agency. Cline's 3.8 million VS Code installs reflect adoption across teams that prioritize control over velocity. Enterprise deployments connect to Bedrock, Vertex, and Azure through the extension's model-agnostic architecture, bringing human-in-the-loop workflows to organizations with strict inference provider requirements.

Millions of developers at large companies use Cline because it doesn't make assumptions about what code should be written or executed without their review.

The Architecture of Agency

Cline's capabilities extend beyond permission gates. The extension handles multi-file editing, terminal execution, and browser-based runtime debugging—infrastructure that GitHub Copilot's incremental model doesn't attempt. The recent v3.25 update introduced Deep Planning and Focus Chain, features designed to keep agentic workflows on track during long-running tasks.

The architecture supports what developers wanted when they asked for AI assistance: tools that augment their judgment rather than replace it. Copilot optimizes for keystroke reduction. Cursor integrates the entire IDE. Cline optimizes for informed decisions, even when that means showing you a diff before touching your codebase.

Growing Pains at Scale

Rapid growth brings challenges. Researchers identified four vulnerabilities including prompt injection and API key exfiltration when opening malicious repositories—issues common to agent systems that execute code. The team addressed them.

Performance issues emerged in large projects. Some users noted slowdowns from git checkpoints and high CPU usage. The checkpoint system that enables Cline's safety features occasionally creates friction at scale, a tradeoff inherent to the permission model. Git repository corruption surfaced when .git folders were renamed and not properly restored, the kind of edge case typical for a project growing this fast.

These are the realities of open-source software finding its footing under real-world load.

When Control Matters More Than Speed

The developers choosing Cline aren't rejecting automation. They're selecting a specific flavor of it, one where they retain veto power over what an AI agent does to their codebase. For teams debugging production systems, auditing changes for compliance, or simply preferring to understand what's happening before it happens, the approval workflow isn't friction—it's the feature.

Copilot's speed serves developers who want suggestions without interruption. Cursor's integration serves those who want a reimagined IDE. Cline serves those who want an agent they can trust because they never relinquish control. The question is which tradeoff your work requires.