Cline: Ditching RAG for a New Paradigm in AI Code Assistance

Cline, an AI code assistant, eschews the popular RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) approach in favor of a method more aligned with developer thinking. The article highlights three major problems with RAG for code: fragmented code logic, index-code desynchronization, and security risks. Cline addresses these by understanding code structure (ASTs), exploring code logic file by file, and building context to provide more accurate and secure code suggestions. It leverages powerful modern language models, reading and understanding code directly on the local machine without vector databases or embeddings, avoiding the pitfalls of RAG and offering superior code suggestions.