What happened to Continue?
Continue was an open-source AI coding assistant delivered as a VS Code extension, JetBrains plugin, and the cn terminal agent. Its official homepage now says Continue has been acquired by Cursor. The repository says it is read-only and no longer actively maintained, and describes version 2.0.0 as the final release across the CLI and IDE clients.
That status changes the recommendation. Continue is not simply another current coding-agent subscription. Its code is still available under Apache License 2.0 and can remain useful, but there is no normal expectation of future official features, security patches, provider updates, or IDE compatibility work. A new adopter must either accept that risk, maintain a fork, or select an actively supported alternative.
What the final product can do
Continue's documented IDE experience includes inline autocomplete, contextual Chat, targeted Edit, read-only Plan, and tool-using Agent modes. Agent mode can search and read the repository, create and modify files, execute terminal commands from the workspace, access web content, and call MCP tools. By default, tool calls ask for permission; policies can make a tool automatic or exclude it.
Plan mode exposes only read-oriented tools such as file and directory inspection, grep, repository maps, URL fetching, web search, and diff viewing. Agent mode adds mutation and execution. Rules stored in .continue/rules can encode project conventions, and configurations can select models, context, prompts, and MCP servers.
The cn CLI provides interactive TUI and headless execution. It can load an agent or local YAML configuration, resume a session, inject rules and MCP servers, restrict tools, run read-only, or use --auto to allow tools without prompting. The documentation supported Continue accounts, a Continue API key, or a direct Anthropic key, but acquisition and final-release notices mean authentication paths should be tested rather than assumed.
Pricing after the acquisition
There is no current public Continue price table: the former /pricing route returns 404 and the homepage is now an acquisition notice. Historical Solo, Team, Mission Control, or credit prices are therefore stale and should not appear in a 2026 buying comparison. The homepage contains FAQ headings for subscriptions and data, but buyers need the actual account communication or support response for their own status.
The final open-source client is free to download under Apache 2.0. Running it is not costless. Bring-your-own model APIs charge by subscription or tokens; local models require hardware and operations; remote MCP services can charge separately; and a fork requires engineers to patch dependencies, track IDE APIs, update model adapters, test releases, and respond to vulnerabilities.
If you already paid for a hosted service, preserve invoices and plan terms, export configurations, and request written answers for service end date, credits, refunds, data export, deletion, support, and any migration to Cursor. Do not infer that a Cursor subscription automatically includes Continue benefits.
Data flow and security
Continue is a client and orchestration layer. Code and prompts flow to whichever model provider is configured. MCP servers receive the arguments and context needed for their tools. Terminal tools run in the developer environment. A locally stored configuration can avoid Continue's former cloud for configuration, and a genuinely local model can keep inference local, but only if no cloud model, web tool, telemetry, MCP server, or hosted secret path receives the data.
The final repository notes that anonymous telemetry was removed and authentication was pulled out in 2.0.0. Older extension packages and earlier documentation may behave differently, so confirm the exact installed version. Historical privacy and service terms described personal information, hosted services, aggregated data, US processing, and customer-content obligations. Those documents do not explain acquisition-specific transfer, deletion, or retention for every account.
Agent permissions deserve particular caution in an end-of-life client. Default approval is useful, but automatic tool policies and CLI --auto can allow file writes and commands without interruption. Repository rules and MCP definitions are also untrusted code or instructions. Use a clean low-privilege environment, keep secrets out of the workspace, inspect configuration before opening a repository, restrict network access, review exact commands and diffs, and never connect production credentials to an unsupported client.
Maintenance and migration checklist
Existing teams should first inventory the installed extension and CLI version, model providers, API keys, Mission Control references, shared configurations, rules, MCP servers, prompts, sessions, and automation jobs. Revoke obsolete tokens and rotate any secret that passed through a shared or uncertain system.
Export configuration to documented local formats where possible. Capture the intended behavior of rules and agents in tests, because another assistant may interpret them differently. Disable hosted workflows before they create duplicate pull requests, then migrate one read-only workflow at a time. Validate retrieval scope, tool arguments, model quality, costs, logs, deletion, and human approval in the replacement.
A team choosing to fork should establish an owner, supported Node and IDE versions, dependency scanning, release signing, vulnerability intake, model-provider compatibility tests, extension publishing, privacy documentation, and a budget. A public repository being available does not create a maintainer.
Verdict
Continue deserves credit as an influential open-source coding agent, and its final code may remain valuable for learning, internal forks, or controlled legacy use. The flexible model layer, rules, MCP support, IDE workflow, and CLI are real capabilities.
It is no longer a strong default for a new long-lived deployment. The official project has reached its final release after joining Cursor, while hosted pricing and future support are not publicly defined. Existing users should export and migrate deliberately; new users should prefer an actively maintained alternative unless they explicitly want to own the code, security, compatibility, and operations themselves.
