⭐️ Resources:
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VSCode website: https://code.visualstudio.com/
Ollama: https://ollama.com/
OpenRouter: https://openrouter.ai/
🐙 GitHub: https://github.com/codewithnathan97
✉️ Email course: https://g.codewithnathan.com/mindset
In this video, I will show you how to set up Visual Studio Code with specific extensions (Cline and Continue.dev) and local AI models (via Ollama) to create a powerful, free, open-source, and private alternative to the Cursor AI code editor.
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Key Takeaways:
💵 Cursor is a popular AI code editor, but its free tier is limited, and the Pro version costs money
🏆 You can replicate many Cursor features for free using VS Code combined with the Continue.dev and Cline extensions.
🦙 Ollama allows you to download and run powerful open-source AI models (like DeepSeek and Qwen) locally on your machine, ensuring privacy and offline capability.
🔥 Continue.dev provides features like AI chat, code completion, and inline code editing within VS Code, using configured models (local via Ollama or external APIs).
✨ Cline adds more advanced, agentic capabilities, allowing the AI to plan and execute multi-step tasks like creating entire projects with multiple files (HTML, CSS, JS) and running terminal commands.
⚡️ OpenRouter.ai can be used as an API provider (within Cline or Continue) to access a wide range of AI models.
This VS Code setup offers greater control over data privacy compared to cloud-based solutions.
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Timestamps:
0:00 - Introduction to the video and goal
0:16 - What is Cursor AI Code Editor?
1:14 - The Free Alternative: VS Code + Extensions
2:24 - Step 1: Install Visual Studio Code (VS Code)
2:47 - Step 2: Install Ollama for Local AI Models
3:30 - Step 3: Install VS Code Extensions (Continue.dev & Cline)
4:01 - Step 4: Configure Continue.dev with Ollama Models (config.yaml)
7:26 - Step 5: Setting up the Cline Extension (Sign-in/API Key)
9:12 - Handling Exhausted Credits: Setting up OpenRouter in Cline
11:52 - Closing