Continue CLI (cn) Overview

​

Get started in 30 seconds

• Node.js 18 or newer
• A Continue Hub account (recommended) or local configuration

# Install Continue CLI
npm install -g @continuedev/cli

# Navigate to your project

cd your-awesome-project

# Start coding with Continue

cn

# You'll be prompted to set up on first use

​

Two Ways to Use Continue CLI

​

TUI Mode: Interactive Development

cn
> @src/components/UserProfile.js Review this component for security issues
> Generate comprehensive unit tests
> Suggest performance improvements

• Interactive conversations with your codebase
• Iterate and refine prompts and approaches
• Explore and understand complex codebases
• Perfect for experimentation and learning

​

Headless Mode: Production Automation

cn -p "Generate a conventional commit message for staged changes"
cn -p "Review pull request changes for security vulnerabilities"
cn -p "Update documentation based on recent code changes"

• Single-command execution for automation
• Reliable, repeatable results for production use
• CI/CD and pipeline integration
• Git hooks and automated workflows

​

Development Workflow: TUI → Headless

1. Experiment in TUI mode to perfect your prompts and agent configuration
2. Test different approaches interactively until you get consistent results
3. Convert successful workflows to automated Continuous AI commands
4. Deploy in production with confidence in your proven approach

​

Why developers love Continue CLI

• Works in your terminal: Not another chat window. Not another IDE. Continue CLI meets you where you already work, with the tools you already love.
• Takes action: Continue CLI can directly edit files, run commands, and create commits. Need more? Check out our MCPs.
• Automate tasks: Create issues from PostHog data, automatically assign labels to issues, and more. Do all this in a single command from your developer machines, or automatically in CI.
• Flexible development flow: Start interactive, then automate proven workflows.

​

Key Capabilities

​

Context Engineering

• Use @ to reference files and provide context
• Use / to run slash commands for specific tasks
• Access the same context providers as IDE extensions

​

Tool Integration

• File editing and creation
• Terminal command execution
• Codebase understanding and analysis
• Git integration
• Web search and documentation access

​

Model Flexibility

• Switch between models with /model command
• Use any model configured in your config.yaml
• Access Continue Hub models and configurations

​

Continue Hub Integration

​

API Access

1. Visit Continue Hub API Keys
2. Create a new API key
3. Use with cn login or in your automation scripts

​

Secrets Management

1. Visit Continue Hub Secrets
2. Add your API keys and sensitive data
3. Reference in configurations with ${{ secrets.SECRET_NAME }}

​

Configuration Sync

• Cloud-managed configurations automatically sync
• Share configurations across team members
• Version control for your AI workflows

​

Common Use Cases

​

TUI Mode Examples

# Start interactive session
cn
> @src/components Find all unused React components
> /explain How does authentication work in this codebase?
> @auth/ What security patterns are used here?

​

Headless Mode Examples

# Generate commit messages
cn -p "Generate a conventional commit message for the current changes"

# Code review automation

cn -p "Review the current git changes for bugs and suggest improvements"

​

Next steps