Cline CLI Preview arrives as a standalone service
Cline CLI Preview is now available and open source, marking the migration of the assistant from a tightly integrated IDE extension to a standalone service powered by Cline Core. Announced October 16, 2025, the release exposes a gRPC API for scriptable automation, multi-instance orchestration, and building custom frontends — positioning the agent loop to run in a wider range of environments beyond the editor.
What the CLI brings
The CLI is designed as a companion to IDE integrations and emphasizes scriptability and multi-agent orchestration. The preview aims to make Clines manageable from the terminal while keeping parity with features found in the IDE extensions. The package can be installed globally with npm install -g cline and the preview is available for download via the official CLI page: Cline CLI Preview.
Key features
- Full feature parity: The CLI supports plan & act workflows, checkpoints, terminal execution, and headless browser usage. It also integrates with a broad range of providers and models.
- Orchestration tools: Advanced tools in the CLI enable management of a fleet of Clines, facilitating parallel runs and coordinated tasks.
- Host provider layer: A generic host provider ships with the CLI so integration into new environments does not require immediate host-specific implementations.
Experimental subagents and multiheaded control
The preview introduces experimental subagents: IDE Cline instances (such as VS Code or JetBrains) can delegate tasks to the CLI, currently configured to use one sub-cline at a time and wait for its completion. Work continues on agent-to-agent coordination.
A multiheaded architecture allows multiple frontends to attach to a running task. This enables scenarios such as an IDE and a mobile frontend remote-controlling a single Cline instance, or delegating tasks between local and server-side Clines. Interoperability features are presently available between JetBrains IDEs and the CLI; support for VS Code is planned.
Architecture: Cline Core and gRPC
At the center of the system is Cline Core, a Node process exposing a gRPC API that accepts commands and publishes state changes and LLM messages to subscribed presentation layers. The decomposition includes a presentation layer (any frontend) and a host provider layer (integrations with editors, linters, or other services). The Core can act as a gRPC client to host providers and as a server for presentation clients, allowing networked, multi-client workflows. Full gRPC documentation is forthcoming, though the Core implementation is available in the repository.
Example use cases and community ideas
Community-contributed ideas shared in Discord describe practical automation use cases, including:
- NPC memory stores for games
- Web interfaces orchestrating background Clines
- Cline embedded in notebooks and non-IDE apps
- Remote-control mobile frontends
- Discord bots that answer common queries
- Shell scripts and cron jobs that convert unstructured inputs into structured JSON
- Automated triage of GitHub issues
These examples highlight how the combination of scriptability, state subscriptions, and a networked API can enable continuous, automated workflows.
Getting started and community
The JetBrains plugin Cline for JetBrains is already built on Cline Core, demonstrating how frontends can be layered atop the service. Community discussion and support for the CLI are available on the project Discord: [https://discord.gg/cline?ref=cline.ghost.io](https://discord.gg/cline?ref=cline.ghost.io. The repository and source code for Cline Core are accessible in the project’s open source release.
Original source: https://cline.bot/blog/cline-cli-my-undying-love-of-cline-core
