Continue: Build Your Own AI Copilot in VS Code and JetBrains with This Open-Source Framework

Continue: Open-Source AI Coding Assistant for Building Your Own Copilot

Continue is a rapidly growing open-source framework for customizable AI coding assistants in VS Code and JetBrains. Unlike Copilot/Cursor, it's model-agnostic and fully controllable - developers choose any LLM backend (Ollama, OpenAI, Anthropic, self-hosted), customize prompt templates, and write custom context providers and tool plugins.

Flexible architecture: core engine handles IDE integration and context management; context providers pull from codebases, docs, Git history, JIRA tickets; model layer supports hot-swapping between tasks; plugin system enables custom tools.

Key advantages over Copilot: model freedom (no single-vendor lock-in), data privacy (fully local models possible - critical for finance/healthcare/government), and deep customization at every layer.

Enterprise adoption surging - GitHub stars up 300%+ in early 2026. Banks, insurance companies, and government agencies are trialing Continue as a Copilot alternative, driven by data sovereignty requirements. Reflects the broader trend from passive code completion toward proactive coding partnership.