Roo Code - AI Code Assistants Tool

Overview

Roo Code is an open-source, editor-first autonomous coding agent implemented as a VS Code extension and local development toolkit. It lives inside your editor, communicates in natural language, and can read and write files, run terminal commands, automate browser interactions (clicks, typing, screenshots, console logs) and propose multi-step changes with diff previews. Roo Code is model-agnostic: it can connect to OpenAI-compatible APIs, Anthropic, Google/Vertex providers, local LLMs (LM Studio/Ollama) or any custom provider you configure, and supports per-mode model selection and token/cost tracking. ([github.com](https://github.com/RooCodeInc/Roo-Code)) Roo Code emphasizes flexible autonomy and extensibility: choose manual approval, fully autonomous (auto-approve), or hybrid workflows; create Custom Modes (QA engineer, product manager, system architect, etc.) via YAML/JSON prompts; and extend capabilities with the Model Context Protocol (MCP) to add custom tools (Jira, AWS, databases). Recent releases added experimental-to-stable codebase indexing (semantic search / embeddings), broad multi-model updates (Gemini, Grok, Claude), and features like a task todo list and improved context tools. The core extension is free and open-source; you pay separately for any external LLM/API usage you choose. ([docs.roocode.com](https://docs.roocode.com/update-notes/v3.18?utm_source=openai))

Installation

Install via npm:

git clone https://github.com/RooCodeInc/Roo-Code.git

pnpm install   # repository uses pnpm for bootstrapping (follow repo README).

pnpm install:vsix [-y] [--editor=<command>]   # builds and installs VSIX automatically

pnpm vsix   # build a .vsix file into bin/ (manual VSIX build)

code --install-extension bin/roo-cline-<version>.vsix   # manual install into VS Code

Open the extension in VS Code and press F5 to run in development mode (Start Debugging). ([github.com](https://github.com/RooCodeInc/Roo-Code))

Key Features

• Natural-language file edits with diff previews and workspace file creation.
• Run terminal commands (install, test, build) with approval, auto-approve, or hybrid modes.
• Browser automation for end-to-end checks: click, type, capture screenshots, and collect console logs.
• Custom Modes (Code, Architect, Ask, Debug) and YAML/JSON mode definitions for tailored personas.
• Model-agnostic integrations (OpenAI-compatible, Gemini, Claude, Grok, local LLMs) and MCP tool extensions.

Community

Roo Code is actively developed and widely used: the RooCodeInc/Roo-Code GitHub repo shows ~21.8k stars, ~2.8k forks, thousands of commits and active issues/PRs, with official docs, Discord and a Reddit community for support. Release notes and docs list recent updates (codebase indexing, model additions, task todo list) and ongoing improvements; community channels (Discord, r/RooCode) and GitHub Issues are the primary places for feedback and feature requests. ([github.com](https://github.com/RooCodeInc/Roo-Code))

Key Information

• Category: Code Assistants
• Type: AI Code Assistants Tool