This article was originally published on aicoderscope.com
If you opened Roo Code this week and went looking for an update that never came, you are not imagining it. Roo Code — the popular Cline fork that introduced the Architect/Code/Ask/Debug "Modes" system — shut down on May 15, 2026. The team archived the GitHub repository, stopped shipping releases at v3.54.0, and said plainly that it no longer believes IDE extensions are the future of coding.
The extension still launches. That is exactly the trap. A frozen agentic extension keeps working until a model provider changes an API or a tool-call format, and in 2026 that happens roughly monthly. So the real question is not "does Roo Code still run today" — it's "what do I move to before it breaks." This piece answers that with verified facts and a concrete migration path.
TL;DR: Roo Code is dead but its DNA lives on. If you want the closest thing to the Roo experience — the same Modes, custom modes, and provider list — move to Kilo Code, which forked both Cline and Roo Code. If you want the most actively maintained, widely trusted option, move to Cline, which is Roo's own official recommendation. Both are free and open source.
| Roo Code (dead) | Cline | Kilo Code | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Status | Archived May 15, 2026 (v3.54.0) | Actively maintained | Actively maintained (GA April 2026) |
| Best for | Nobody new | Trust + stability + simplest model | Roo refugees who want Modes back |
| License | Apache 2.0 (frozen) | Apache 2.0 | Apache 2.0 (ext), MIT (CLI) |
| Modes | Code/Architect/Ask/Debug/Orchestrator | Plan + Act | Architect/Coder/Debugger + custom |
| Cost | $0 (but unmaintained) | $0 extension, you pay model API | $0 extension, $20 free credits to start |
| Local models | Yes (Ollama) | Yes (Ollama) | Yes (Ollama) |
Honest take: If you were a Roo Code power user living in custom modes, go to Kilo Code — it preserves the mental model you already have. Everyone else should just install Cline and stop thinking about it. Do not keep running the archived Roo Code extension into the second half of 2026.
What actually happened to Roo Code
Roo Code started life as Roo-Cline: a fork of Cline that added a multi-mode system on top of the base agent. Where Cline gives you two states — Plan and Act — Roo Code shipped a library of role-driven modes (Code, Architect, Ask, Debug, Orchestrator) plus community-installable and user-defined custom modes, each with its own system prompt, file-access scope, and tool permissions. That structure earned it a real following: roughly 23,000 GitHub stars and over 3 million installs before the end.
On May 15, 2026, the team shut the whole thing down — the VS Code extension, Roo Code Cloud, and the Roo Code Router — and archived the repository. They committed to refunding unused Cloud and Router balances. The stated reason was not burnout or funding: the team said it does not believe IDE-embedded extensions are where AI coding is heading, and redirected its attention to a new cloud-agent project, roomote.dev.
The final extension build, v3.54.0, is the end of the line. There will be no bug fixes, no model-compatibility updates, and no new features. Roo Code's own parting advice to extension users was direct: if you want a model-agnostic open-source extension, use Cline.
Does Roo Code still work — and for how long?
Yes, the archived extension still functions today. Archiving a repo is not a kill switch; your local install keeps running against whatever providers you already configured.
The problem is shelf life. Agentic coding extensions are tightly coupled to provider APIs and tool-call formats. When a provider tweaks its function-calling schema, deprecates a model ID, or changes streaming behavior, a maintained extension ships a patch within days. A frozen one just starts failing — silent tool-call loops, "model not found" errors, broken diffs. We have already seen this pattern bite other frozen tools. Treat Roo Code the way you'd treat an unmaintained dependency with a known clock on it: fine for a week, risky for a quarter, negligent for a year.
If you only ever used Roo Code as a chat box pointed at a stable model, you have more runway. If you leaned on agentic file edits, terminal commands, and tool use, migrate now while the migration is a 20-minute task and not an emergency.
Option 1: Cline — the safe default
Cline (formerly Claude Dev) is the project Roo Code itself points to, and the math backs that up. It's Apache-2.0 open source, passed 1.5 million VS Code Marketplace installs by April 2026, and carries more than 59,000 GitHub stars. It is bring-your-own-key by default: you connect Anthropic, OpenAI, OpenRouter, AWS Bedrock, Google Vertex, Azure, or a local endpoint, and pay the model provider directly. The extension takes no markup.
Cline's interaction model is simpler than Roo's. Instead of a mode library, you toggle between two states:
- Plan mode — Cline explores the codebase, asks clarifying questions, and proposes a strategy without editing files.
- Act mode — once you approve the plan, Cline executes it: edits files, runs terminal commands, and iterates.
For most developers this is a feature, not a downgrade. The Roo Code Modes system was powerful but had a learning curve; a lot of people never used more than two modes anyway. If your Roo workflow was essentially "plan, then build," Cline's Plan/Act maps onto it cleanly with zero configuration.
Where Cline wins decisively is trust and momentum: it's the most-installed open-source agent in this category, it ships frequently, and its MCP support, checkpointing, and provider list are kept current. We cover its cost behavior in depth in our Cline review and its privacy-first local setup in Cline + Local LLM.
Option 2: Kilo Code — for Roo refugees who want their Modes back
If the Modes system is the specific thing you'll miss, Kilo Code is the closest landing spot. Kilo Code is unusual in that it forked both Cline and Roo Code, merging their feature sets — so it inherits Roo's role-driven modes (Architect, Coder, Debugger, plus custom modes) on top of Cline's agent core. The VS Code extension reached general availability in April 2026, is Apache-2.0 (the CLI is MIT), reports over 1.5 million users, and raised an $8M seed round, which matters here only because it signals the project isn't about to repeat Roo's disappearing act.
Kilo's pitch is breadth: access to 500+ models, bring-your-own-key at zero markup, and several genuinely free paths to get started:
- $20 in free credits for new users, so you can try models without configuring any API key.
- Kilo's own built-in free models.
- OpenRouter free-tier models — Qwen3, GLM 4.5 Air, DeepSeek R1, Kimi K2 — at no cost.
- NVIDIA's API catalog via the OpenAI-compatible provider.
- Free Codestral autocomplete through Mistral.
For a developer coming off Roo Code's billing shock — or off the GitHub Copilot usage-based billing change that pushed a lot of people toward free alternatives in the first place — that free-model stack is the realistic zero-cost replacement.
The genuinely free path: OpenRouter free tier or local Ollama
Both Cline and Kilo Code separate the tool (free) from the model (you pay, or you don't). Two routes get your monthly cost to literal zero.
Route A — OpenRouter free models. Sign up at OpenRouter, grab an API key, and select a :free model variant. This is fastest to set up and needs no GPU, at the cost of rate limits and the privacy trade-off of sending code to a hosted endpoint.
Route B — local models via Ollama. Run the model on your own machine. Nothing leaves your network, there are no token bills, and there are no rate limits — but you need the hard
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