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AI coding assistant: Continue

Continue is the leading open-source AI code assistant. It is a copilot-like plugin for VSCode and JetBrains to provide custom autocomplete and chat experiences inside those IDEs. You can easily configure it to use Gaia nodes as LLM backends. In fact, you can choose different Gaia nodes for

  • The autocomplete model for coding tasks.
  • The chat model for understanding and discussing code.
  • The embedding model to provide chat context based on local files.

Prerequisites​

You will need a Gaia node ready to provide LLM services through a public URL. You can

In this tutorial, we will use public nodes to power the Continue plugin.

Model typeAPI base URLModel name
Chathttps://gemma.us.gaianet.network/v1/gemma
Embeddinghttps://gemma.us.gaianet.network/v1/nomic
Autocompletionhttps://codestral.us.gaianet.network/v1/codestral

It is important to note that Continue requires the API endpoint to include a / at the end.

Install Continue​

Load this link to install the Continue IDE plugin.
It will open up your VSCode when you click on the Install button on the web page. When you are asked to configure Continue, just click on Skip and finish the installation without selecting a local model.

Configure Continue​

Click on the gear icon on the toolbar to load the config.json file for the Continue plugin. The file is located in your own home directory $HOME/.continue/config.json. You can now change the config.json file as follows. It asks the Continue plugin to use different public Gaia nodes and models for chat, code autocomplete and embeddings.

{
  "models": [
    {
      "model": "gemma",
      "title": "LlamaEdge",
      "apiBase": "https://gemma.us.gaianet.network/v1/",
      "provider": "openai"
    }
  ],
  "tabAutocompleteModel": {
      "title": "Autocomplete",
      "apiBase": "https://codestral.us.gaianet.network/v1/",
      "model": "codestral",
      "provider": "openai"
  },
  "embeddingsProvider": {
    "provider": "openai",
    "model": "nomic-embed",
    "apiBase": "https://gemma.us.gaianet.network/v1/"
  },
  "customCommands": [
    {
      "name": "test",
      "prompt": "{{{ input }}}\n\nWrite a comprehensive set of unit tests for the selected code. It should setup, run tests that check for correctness including important edge cases, and teardown. Ensure that the tests are complete and sophisticated. Give the tests just as chat output, don't edit any file.",
      "description": "Write unit tests for highlighted code"
    }
  ],
  "allowAnonymousTelemetry": true
}

Save the config.json file and you are done!

Use the plugin​

The following screenshot shows how you can chat with an error message inside the IDE.