freeCode

Freedom to code. Built for vibe coders. 🚀
Professional architecture · Agentic superpowers · Better than Cursor

An open-source, VS Code-inspired AI coding assistant with full tool access — read files, edit code, run commands, search the web, and more. Runs everywhere: as a VS Code extension, a standalone Windows desktop app, or a Node.js CLI.

Repository layout

Directory	What it is
`vscode-extension/`	VS Code extension — Cursor-style sidebar chat panel + `@claude` chat participant
`electron-app/`	Standalone Windows 11 desktop app built with Electron
`v2/`	Agent loop CLI library — the engine used by both front-ends

What's New in v3.1 — Edit & Bash validation recovery 🛡️

🔧 Edit Tool — Parameter Name Normalization

The Edit tool now accepts the alternative parameter names that models sometimes use instead of the canonical ones, mirroring the behaviour already present in Bash and MultiEdit:

Canonical	Accepted alternatives
`file_path`	`filename`, `path`, `file`
`old_string`	`old_content`, `original_string`, `original`, `search`
`new_string`	`new_content`, `replacement_string`, `replacement`, `replace`

Previously, using any of these alternates produced Validation error: file_path required, old_string required and the edit was silently dropped.

🔧 Bash Tool — Additional Parameter Name Aliases

Three more aliases recognised for the command parameter: bash, shell, code. These join the existing set (cmd, bash_command, shell_command, script, run, execute).

♻️ Clearer Validation Error Messages

All tool validation errors now end with "Please correct the parameters and retry the tool call." This makes it unambiguous to the model that it should fix and resubmit the call rather than responding with an explanation and stopping.

🔄 Agent Loop — Auto-Nudge on All-Validation-Error Batches

When every tool call in a single response batch fails with a validation error, the agent loop now appends a system text block to the tool-result message:

"All tool call(s) above failed input validation. Review the required parameter names for each tool and retry the tool call(s) immediately. Do not stop or summarise — keep going."

This prevents the model from giving up with a summary message when it should be retrying the failed calls.

What's New in v3.0 — MultiEdit & Edit reliability on Windows 🪟🔧

🔁 `MultiEdit` "old_string not found" Fixed in All Modes

MultiEdit would always fail validation with "old_string not found" on Windows projects, even when the Edit tool succeeded on the same file. Three root causes were fixed:

Root cause	Fix
CRLF leak in `Read` output	The `Read` tool now normalises `\r\n` → `\n` before returning content to the model. The model was building `old_string` values containing `\r` from Windows files, which never matched even though `MultiEdit` also normalised internally.
`MultiEdit` skipped the read-first gate	`Edit` has always required the target file to be `Read` before it can be edited, forcing the model to work from real file content rather than memory. `MultiEdit` had no such check. It now enforces the same contract — if the file wasn't read first, the agent receives an explicit `"You must Read … before editing it. Use the Read tool first."` message.
`MultiEdit` didn't call `markRead` after writing	After a successful `MultiEdit`, any follow-up `Edit` call on the same file would fail with "You must Read first" because the write was not tracked. `MultiEdit` now calls `markRead` for every file it writes, keeping the read-tracking state consistent for the rest of the session.

Together these changes make MultiEdit behave reliably in every permission mode — default, acceptEdits, dontAsk, and plan — and on both Windows (CRLF) and Unix (LF) projects.

What's New in v2.9 — UX polish, reliability & permission improvements 🛡️✨🔐

🔗 Clickable File Paths in Plain Chat Text (both apps)

File paths mentioned in plain prose — not just in backtick code spans — are now automatically detected and rendered as clickable links.

Patterns like Found in lib/core/utils/content_validation.dart become one-click navigation
Extended file-extension coverage: .dart, .vue, .svelte, .graphql, .proto, .tf, and more
In the Electron app the file opens directly in the built-in editor panel; in VS Code the file opens in the editor
If the agent just edited that file, the click jumps straight to the diff tab

🎭 AI Persona Quick-Select (both apps)

A compact 🎭 persona selector now lives in the header toolbar alongside the Model and Mode dropdowns, letting you switch agent personality in one click without opening Settings.

Persona	Behaviour
auto	Let the AI decide the most appropriate style
expert-engineer	Precise, production-ready code with full context
pair-programmer	Conversational, step-by-step guidance
code-reviewer	Focused on correctness, edge cases, and style
architect	High-level design and system thinking
debugger	Root-cause analysis and targeted fixes
devops	CI/CD, infra-as-code, deployment pipelines
security	Threat modelling, secure coding, vulnerability analysis

The selector syncs with the Settings panel and persists across sessions.

🔐 Inline Cursor-Style Permission Cards + "Allow for Session" (both apps)

Permission prompts no longer interrupt the entire UI with a modal overlay. They are now rendered as inline cards directly in the chat stream, exactly like Cursor's approach:

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ 🔐 Permission Required                               │
│  The agent wants to run: Edit                        │
│  File: src/auth/middleware.ts                        │
│  [✗ Deny]  [✓ Allow for Session]  [✓ Allow Once]    │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Allow Once — approves this single request
Allow for Session — adds the tool to an in-memory approved set; all future requests for that tool in this session are auto-approved without showing the card again
Deny — blocks the action and informs the agent

🖥️ Bash Command UI — Syntax Colors + Copy (both apps)

Terminal output from the agent now looks like a real terminal:

Lines are colour-coded: commands (accent blue), errors (red), warnings (yellow), success messages (green)
Font size increased to 12px with 1.5× line-height for comfortable reading
A 📋 Copy button in the tool card header lets you copy the full output to the clipboard in one click
Works for both live-streamed output and instant results

🔧 Edit Tool — Fuzzy Whitespace Recovery

The Edit tool no longer fails with "old_string not found" when trailing whitespace on a line differs between what the agent sent and what is on disk:

If an exact match fails, the tool retries with trailing whitespace stripped from each line
If a line-trimmed match is found, the replacement is applied against the actual file content — preserving the real indentation
The result message indicates (matched after whitespace normalization) for transparency

This eliminates the most common agent self-correction loop.

⚡ Editor Diff Auto-Reveal + In-Chat Notification (Electron)

When the agent edits a file the diff is now impossible to miss:

The Editor panel expands automatically (removes panel-collapsed) — you no longer have to manually click to reveal it
An inline notification card appears in the chat stream:
```
⚡ Diff opened for middleware.ts   [View Diff →]
```
Clicking View Diff → focuses the editor panel on that file's diff tab

▶ Agent Continuation — Never Stops Unexpectedly (both apps)

Two complementary improvements prevent the agent from silently abandoning tasks:

Higher continuation budget — the internal maxContinuationTurns limit is raised from 50 to 100, giving complex multi-file tasks enough headroom to complete
Inline Continue button — when the turn limit is reached, instead of a silent stop an inline card appears in chat:
```
⏸ Max turns reached — the agent paused before finishing.   [▶ Continue]
```
Clicking ▶ Continue sends a resumption prompt so the agent picks up exactly where it left off — no copy-pasting, no rephrasing

💾 CLAUDE.md Offer as Inline Chat Card (both apps)

The session-summary prompt is now a first-class chat message rather than a small toast banner that's easy to miss:

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ 💾 Session Summary                                       │
│  Update CLAUDE.md with a summary of this session?        │
│  This helps the agent remember context in future sessions│
│  [Not now]  [💾 Yes, update]                             │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Clicking Yes, update triggers the agent to write (or update) CLAUDE.md with decisions made, files changed, architectural patterns, and conventions for future sessions.

✏️ Edit Allowed in Plan Mode

Edit, Write, Bash, and all other tools are now fully allowed when the agent runs in plan mode. Previously plan mode used a narrow read-only allowlist (Read, Glob, Grep, LS, TodoWrite) that prevented the agent from performing actions the user explicitly requested while planning. The mode now returns true for every tool, matching the intent of letting the agent plan and prototype freely.

🌐 Web Search Allowed in Every Permission Mode

WebSearch and WebFetch are now unconditionally allowed in all permission modes, including dontAsk (which previously blocked every tool call).

What changed	Detail
`checker.mjs` early-return	`WebSearch` / `WebFetch` bypass the mode switch entirely — no mode can block them
`SAFE_TOOLS` in `prompt.mjs`	Both tools added to the safe set so `default` mode never shows an interactive permission prompt

This means you can always ask the agent to look something up on the web, regardless of which permission mode the project is in.

🔁 StuckDetector — three stuck-loop conditions

Previous versions tracked only one failure mode (identical tool call three times in a row). v2.9 replaces the ad-hoc check with a dedicated StuckDetector class that recognises three distinct failure modes:

Condition	When it fires
`SAME_CALL_LOOP`	The same tool is called with identical arguments 3+ consecutive times and makes no progress (result is unchanged or an error is returned every time)
`THRASHING_LOOP`	3+ different tools all fail on the same target file within the last 10 tool calls — e.g. `Edit → MultiEdit → Write → Bash` each failing on `lib/dashboard.dart`
`VOLUME_LIMIT`	More than 20 tool calls are dispatched in a single agent response turn (since the last user message) — an upper bound that prevents silent runaway loops regardless of failure mode

When any condition is detected the agent loop emits a structured event and stops immediately:

{ type: 'stuck', reason: 'THRASHING_LOOP', summary: '3 different tools (Edit, MultiEdit, Write) all failed on "lib/dashboard.dart" within the last 3 tool calls. Last error: ...' }
{ type: 'stop', reason: 'stuck' }

The summary field tells the user (and any UI) exactly what was attempted, how many times, and what the last error was — enabling one-click retry with a hint.

🟨 `renderStuckPanel` — stuck-agent UI component

A new renderStuckPanel(event) export in v2/src/ui/ink-app.mjs renders a yellow/amber bordered terminal panel whenever a stuck event fires:

──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────
  ⚠  Agent stuck — THRASHING_LOOP

  3 different tools (Edit, MultiEdit, Write) all failed on "lib/dashboard.dart"
  within the last 3 tool calls. Last error: old_string not found in file.

  [R] Retry with a hint — type a hint and resume the agent
  [S] Skip this step — mark as skipped and continue
──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────

The panel is word-wrapped to fit the terminal width and presents two recovery actions the caller should wire up:

[R] Retry with a hint — prompt the user for a clarifying hint, inject it as a system message, and resume the agent
[S] Skip this step — mark the step as skipped and continue with the next task

📋 Tool Use Discipline — new system prompt section

A new ## TOOL USE DISCIPLINE section appended to the agent system prompt enforces a hard 3-attempt budget per goal:

Attempt 1: Use the most direct tool (Edit or bash sed).
Attempt 2: If attempt 1 fails, diagnose WHY — read the file back,
           check permissions, check encoding — then try ONE different approach.
Attempt 3: If attempt 2 fails, STOP and report:
  "BLOCKED: I cannot complete [goal]. I tried [method1] and [method2].
   The issue appears to be [diagnosis]. Please [specific ask]."

NEVER cycle through all available tools hoping one works.
NEVER retry the same approach more than once.
NEVER spend more than 3 tool calls on a single atomic change.

This targets the model-level tendency to exhaust every available tool before surfacing a failure to the user.

What's New in v2.8 — AI power & UX supremacy 🚀

These three enhancements are present in both the VS Code extension and the Electron desktop app (Focus Mode is Electron-only).

⚡📖 Response Style Pill (both apps)

No competitor has this built-in. A compact three-state pill selector sits just above the message input in both apps:

Pill	Effect
Auto (default)	No modifier — let the model decide
⚡ Brief	Appends "Respond concisely. Use bullet points where suitable."
📖 Thorough	Appends "Provide a thorough, detailed explanation with examples and reasoning."

Selection persists in localStorage across sessions. Zero friction — one click, every future message adapts.

⭐ Message Bookmarks / Starred Replies (both apps)

Every AI reply now has a ☆ star button in its header (visible on hover). Clicking it:

Marks the message with a gold ★
Saves the full text to localStorage under the current session title + timestamp
If the ⭐ Stars panel (new header button) is open, it refreshes immediately

The Stars panel shows all saved messages with copy and remove buttons. A 🗑 Clear all button with a confirmation dialog removes everything at once. Neither Cursor nor Windsurf offers any form of reply bookmarking.

🎯 Focus / Zen Mode (Electron app)

Click the ⊞ Focus button in the header (or press Ctrl+Shift+Z) to hide the Explorer and Editor panels, giving the chat column the full window width. A centred max-width layout (860 px) makes long AI conversations comfortable to read. Click again or press the shortcut again to exit.

What's New in v2.7 — Cursor & Windsurf killers 🎯

These three enhancements are present in both the VS Code extension and the Electron desktop app.

✏️ Inline Edit Bar (Cmd+K / Ctrl+K)

The #1 feature that makes Cursor famous is now in freeCode — and it works without any third-party subscription.

Electron app: open a file in the built-in editor, select any code (or place the cursor on a line), then press Cmd+K / Ctrl+K. A sleek edit bar slides in at the top of the editor panel. Type your instruction and press Enter — the selected code and your instruction are sent to the AI, which edits the file directly.
VS Code extension: press Ctrl+K anywhere in the chat panel (when the input is not focused) to open a Quick-Edit bar. Type your instruction and press Enter — the active file is automatically added to context and the instruction is prefilled in the message box ready to send.

Esc or the ✕ button cancels without sending.

⭐ Custom Quick Actions (User-Saved Prompts)

Both Cursor and Windsurf ship a fixed list of slash commands. freeCode lets you save your own prompt buttons.

Click ⚡ Actions to open the Quick Actions panel. Scroll to the new ⭐ My Prompts section and click + Save prompt. Enter a short label (e.g. "Add logging") and a template (use {selection} to insert selected text). The button is saved in browser localStorage and persists across sessions. Each saved button has a × to delete it.

✗ Reject All (Electron)

The diff toolbar in the Electron app now has a ✗ Reject All button next to ✓ Accept All.
Clicking it restores the original content of every open diff tab to disk and closes them in one shot — the symmetric counterpart to Accept All.

What's New in v2.6 — agent reliability & tool improvements 🛡️

🛡️ Mandatory Agent Reliability Rules

The system prompt now enforces five hard rules that prevent the agent from silently doing the wrong thing:

Always act via tools — describing an action without calling a tool is a critical failure; text like "I would create …" is never acceptable when the task requires a real change
Plan → Act → Verify — every Write/Edit must be followed by a Read-back to confirm the result; linter/test commands are run if available
3-attempt loop budget — after 3 failed attempts on the same step the agent emits a structured BLOCKED: … | root cause: … | need: … message and stops rather than looping forever
Root cause before fix — the agent must read the file and capture the exact error before attempting a fix, preventing guess-and-retry spirals
Forbidden behaviours explicitly listed — claiming success without verification, retrying an identical failing call, or outputting code in chat instead of calling Write/Edit are all prohibited

🔁 Infinite-Loop Guard

The agent loop now tracks the last three tool calls. If the same tool is called with identical arguments and produces an identical result three times in a row, the loop is stopped automatically and a { type: 'stuck' } event is emitted — preventing silent CPU-burning loops when an edit can never succeed.

✅ Edit & MultiEdit Verification

After every Edit or MultiEdit call the agent now reads the file back and checks:

new_string is present in the file (replacement was actually applied)
old_string is no longer present (the old text is gone)

If either check fails a { type: 'warning' } event is emitted so the agent can self-correct. This extends the existing Write verification that was already in place.

🌐 HTML → Plain Text in WebFetch

When the WebFetch tool receives an text/html or application/xhtml response it now automatically strips tags and returns clean plain text instead of raw HTML markup. This dramatically reduces the token cost of reading documentation pages.

<script> and <style> blocks (including their content) are removed first
Block-level elements (<p>, <div>, <h1>–<h6>, <li>, etc.) become newlines
All remaining tags are stripped
HTML entities are decoded (&, <, >, …, ’, etc.)
A new raw_html: true parameter is available for callers that need the original markup

🗂️ Smarter Glob — Fewer Noise Files

The Glob tool's directory walk now skips a much broader list of generated/vendor directories that are never useful to search:

Added exclusions
`.git` · `dist` · `build` · `out`
`.next` · `.nuxt` · `__pycache__`
`.cache` · `coverage` · `.nyc_output`
`.turbo` · `.venv` · `venv` · `.tox`
`vendor` · `target` · `.gradle`

📂 LS — Sorted Output

The LS tool output is now sorted: directories first (alphabetically), then files (alphabetically). Previously entries were returned in filesystem order which varies by OS and makes it harder to scan.

🐛 PDF Reader ESM Fix

The Read tool's PDF handler was calling require('child_process') inside an ES module, which throws a ReferenceError at runtime. The import is now a proper top-level import { spawnSync } statement.

What's New in v2.5 — session memory & permissions 🧠🔧

🎯 Session Goal Memory

freeCode now tracks what you're trying to accomplish and keeps it visible throughout the entire session:

A sticky goal banner appears below the toolbar, auto-populated from your very first message
Click the goal text to edit it inline — press Enter or click away to save
Click ✕ to dismiss the banner
The goal survives context compaction — when the conversation history is summarised to free up tokens, the goal is re-injected so the agent never forgets it
The goal is persisted to disk alongside the session history and automatically restored when you reopen a past session

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  🎯 Build a REST API with authentication and rate limiting │  ✕  │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘

🔄 Cross-Session Context Persistence

Session goals round-trip through every save/load path — autoSaveSession, saveSession, updateSession, resumeFromHistory, and loadSession — so switching between past sessions always restores the correct goal.

🤖 Strict Agent Execution Protocol

The agent now follows a mandatory discipline loop for every task:

EXPLORE — reads all relevant files before touching anything
PLAN — states in ≤ 5 bullet points exactly what will change and why
ACT — executes changes using tools; never just describes them
VERIFY — re-reads the file and runs the linter/build to confirm the change worked
REPORT — states the final result with actual output (e.g. eslint: 0 errors ✓)

Additional guardrails prevent the agent from silently claiming success, retrying the same failed approach more than 3 times, or writing placeholder code.

🔐 Permission Modes — All Modes Now Work Correctly

Edit and MultiEdit were silently blocked in all modes due to four distinct bugs that have been fixed:

default mode hung indefinitely — the Allow/Deny permission card appeared in the UI but the agent never received the answer because resolvePermission was missing from the bridge. The agent now correctly waits for your approval and resumes or is blocked based on your choice.
plan mode blocked TodoWrite — TodoWrite is a read-only task-tracking tool and is now correctly allowed in plan mode alongside Read, Glob, Grep, and LS.
All modes: informative denial messages — instead of a bare "Permission denied" result, the agent now receives a mode-specific explanation:
- dontAsk mode → "Edit is not allowed in dontAsk mode."
- Other blocked modes → "Permission denied for Edit."

🗂️ Session Context Leak — Fixed

Problem: After switching permission modes (which tears down and rebuilds the agent bridge), clicking New Chat or deleting a history session and creating a fresh one would cause the agent to silently inherit the old session's conversation context. The agent continued the previous session without any user input.

Fix: The clear command now discards any saved agent messages, so every new chat truly starts from scratch regardless of prior mode switches.

🏷️ "Blocked by Hook" vs "Permission Denied" — Clearer UI Messages

Previously every tool block — whether from a hook rule or from a permission mode restriction — showed ⛔ Tool blocked by hook: Edit. The UI now distinguishes the two cases:

Hook rule triggered → ⛔ Tool blocked by hook: Edit
Permission mode blocked → ⛔ Tool blocked (permission denied): Edit

What's New in v2.4 — vibe-coder edition 🎉

🎤 Voice Input

Click the 🎤 mic button in the input bar to dictate your prompt using the browser's Web Speech API.

Click once to start recording, click again (or wait) to stop
Interim transcription streams live into the input field as you speak — you see the words appear in real time
Pulsing red glow animation while recording so you always know the mic is active
Button is automatically hidden on browsers/OSes that don't support the Speech API — no broken UI

📝 File-Change Watcher Toast

When any file you've opened in the editor (or added to context) is modified externally — by another process, git pull, or a background tool — a toast notification slides up from the bottom of the screen:

📝 server.js was modified externally   [Re-read]  [✕]

Re-read — instantly re-adds the file to the context chips so the agent has the latest content
Auto-dismisses after 8 seconds if you ignore it
Zero configuration — freeCode watches the workspace continuously

❌ Tool Error — Inject Error as Context

When an agent tool call fails (file not found, old_string mismatch, shell error, etc.), the tool card now:

Shows a red border + ✗ failed badge so errors are impossible to miss
Adds a "↩ Retry with error context" button that pre-fills the input:

Fix this error that just occurred:

[Tool Error in Edit]
old_string not found in file: src/server.ts

One click → the agent gets the exact error text and self-corrects automatically.

💾 CLAUDE.md Auto-Update Offer

After any session where the agent edited files, freeCode offers to write a project memory file:

💾 Update CLAUDE.md with a summary of this session?   [Yes, update]  [Not now]

Clicking Yes, update sends a structured prompt asking the agent to update (or create) CLAUDE.md with:

Decisions made and architectural patterns established
Files changed and conventions to follow in future sessions
A concise developer-focused summary — not a chat log

This turns every coding session into persistent project knowledge, making future sessions smarter automatically — a feature no other AI coding tool offers out of the box.

Windows Terminal — PowerShell First

On Windows, freeCode always runs commands through PowerShell (powershell.exe).
WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) is intentionally not used, even when it is installed.

Why PowerShell instead of WSL?

Issue with WSL	How PowerShell fixes it
Shell scripts saved with Windows line endings (`\r\n`) cause `/usr/bin/env: 'bash\r': No such file or directory`	PowerShell parses commands directly — no shebang lines, no `\r` errors
Windows paths (`C:\Users\...`) are invalid inside WSL's Linux filesystem	PowerShell uses native Windows paths without translation
Alpine/Ubuntu distro mismatch causes `No such file or directory` for packages	No WSL distro needed at all

POSIX shims

Because many AI-generated commands use Unix utilities (grep, cat, touch, ls, find, sed, …), freeCode automatically injects PowerShell POSIX shims before every command. These thin wrappers map the most common Unix commands to their PowerShell equivalents so commands like:

grep "error" log.txt
find . -name "*.dart"
cat pubspec.yaml

work out of the box inside PowerShell without any extra setup.

Running Flutter / Dart commands

All Flutter and Dart CLI commands work exactly as expected:

flutter analyze
flutter pub get
dart format .

You can also invoke them explicitly via PowerShell:

powershell.exe -Command "flutter analyze"

What's New in v2.3

🔌 Custom Providers UI — Redesigned Settings Cards

The Custom Providers section in Settings has been completely reworked for clarity and ease of use:

Provider cards now display an auto-picked emoji icon based on the base URL (🤖 OpenAI, ⚡ NVIDIA NIM, 🌐 Google, 💻 Ollama/local, 🔌 generic)
Model names are shown in accent colour beneath the base URL so you can see at a glance which models a provider exposes
✏ Edit and ✕ Remove buttons are grouped in a tidy action area on the right side of each card, with hover colours
Cards have a subtle hover border-colour transition and rounded corners for a modern look
The add/edit form gets an icon-prefixed title (🔌 Add Custom Provider / ✏ Edit Provider) and a top-border separator above the action buttons
The empty-state hint now reads: "No custom providers yet. Click + Add Provider to connect any OpenAI-compatible API."

📐 Editor Line Numbers

The built-in code editor now shows VS Code-style line numbers in a gutter on the left:

A dedicated line-number column appears left of the text area, styled identically to VS Code's default theme (muted colour, right-aligned)
The gutter scrolls in sync with the file content as you scroll or navigate
Line numbers update instantly as you type — adding or removing lines adjusts the count in real time
Works in both the Electron app and the VS Code extension webview

🟩🟥 Accurate Diff View for Large Files

The diff view now correctly shows which lines actually changed instead of marking the entire after-file as added:

Before (bug): When an agent edited a large file (800+ lines), the diff showed every single line as a green + line — making it impossible to tell what actually changed.

After (fixed): Unchanged lines are shown as grey context lines; only truly added lines are green and truly removed lines are red.

The fix replaces the previous O(n²) fallback (which degenerated to "all added" for files with more than ~400 K line-pairs) with a fast hash-based patience-diff approximation:

Builds a positional index of all lines in the new file
Greedily maps matching lines from the old file → keeping them as context
Only emits red/green markers for lines that truly differ

Both the Electron app and the VS Code extension webview use the updated algorithm.

🔄 Agent Auto-Retry on 429 / Rate-Limit Errors

The agent no longer stops mid-task when it hits a 429 Too Many Requests or other transient API error:

An inner retry loop wraps every API call inside the agent loop generator — the HTTP request is retried up to 3 times without re-adding the user message or corrupting conversation history
Exponential back-off: 30 s → 60 s → 120 s between attempts
Respects the Retry-After HTTP header returned by Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google — waits exactly as long as the provider requests
Emits a retrying event that both UIs display as: ⏳ Rate limited — retrying in 30s (attempt 1/3)…
Covers all providers: Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, NVIDIA NIM, and Custom Providers
After 3 failed retries the error is surfaced normally — the main.js outer retry loop remains as a final safety net

What's New in v2.2

🔌 Custom Providers — Add Any OpenAI-Compatible API

Open the Settings panel (⚙ button) and scroll to Custom Providers to add any OpenAI-compatible endpoint — NVIDIA NIM, OpenRouter, local LLMs, etc.

Each provider supports:

Provider ID — unique internal key (e.g. nvidia-kimi)
Display Name — shown in the model selector
Base URL — e.g. https://integrate.api.nvidia.com/v1
API Key — stored in app settings
Models — one per line in id:Display Name format
Headers — optional extra HTTP headers (e.g. Accept:text/event-stream)

Custom provider models appear automatically in both the header model dropdown and the settings model selector. The agent loop routes requests to the correct endpoint without any restart.

Example providers:

Provider	Base URL	Notes
NVIDIA Kimi	`https://integrate.api.nvidia.com/v1`	`moonshotai/kimi-k2.5`
NVIDIA Qwen	`https://integrate.api.nvidia.com/v1`	`qwen/qwen3-coder-480b-a35b-instruct`
OpenRouter	`https://openrouter.ai/api/v1`	any model slug

📋 Plan Board — TodoWrite Integration & Execution Enforcement

The plan board now stays in sync with the agent's own TodoWrite tool calls:

Auto-sync — when the agent calls TodoWrite, the plan board updates immediately to reflect pending / in-progress / completed items
Execution directive — every message that includes an active plan now injects an explicit instruction telling the agent to use Read/Write/Edit/Bash/MultiEdit tools for each step and call TodoWrite after completion — preventing the agent from narrating instead of acting

🤝 Multi-Agents Mode — Team-Based Collaborative Execution

The Agent tool now supports a team parameter that runs multiple specialized agents through configurable phases:

{
  "prompt": "Add authentication to the API",
  "team": [
    { "role": "planner" },
    { "role": "coder", "model": "gpt-4o" },
    { "role": "reviewer" }
  ],
  "phases": ["planning", "implementation", "review"]
}

Built-in agent roles:

Role	Behaviour
`coder`	Implements changes using file tools
`reviewer`	Reviews code for bugs and improvements
`researcher`	Finds and summarizes information
`tester`	Writes and runs tests
`planner`	Breaks tasks into numbered steps
`summarizer`	Produces concise progress summaries
`prompter`	Generates precise prompts for other agents

Each agent's output is fed as shared context to the next, creating a collaborative pipeline. Results are structured by phase so you can see exactly what each agent contributed.

🧠 Context Retention — Session Persistence

A new session persistence layer saves conversation summaries to ~/.freecode/sessions/:

persistSession(messages, sessionId) — saves a structured summary (files edited, tools used, key exchanges) to disk
injectSavedContext(messages, sessionId) — prepends the saved summary as the first message when resuming, so the agent instantly knows what was done before
buildSessionSummary(messages) — produces a human-readable summary from any message array, useful for hand-off between agents

🛡️ MultiEdit Validation Hardening

The MultiEdit tool now enforces all three invariants before writing any file:

Every edit must have a file_path
Every edit must have an old_string
Every edit must have a new_string
old_string must differ from new_string

This prevents silent no-ops and corrupted edits that force full-file recreation.

What's New in v2.1

🏷️ Mode Badge in Agent Responses

Every assistant message header now shows a color-coded mode badge (e.g. [plan], [auto], [bypass]) next to the "Claude" name so you always know which permission mode was active when a response was generated.

📋 Plan Mode — Cursor-Style To-Do Board

Switching to plan mode reveals a persistent task board above the chat input:

Auto-populated — when the agent replies with a numbered or bulleted list in plan mode, items are automatically parsed and added to the board
Progress tracking — the first uncompleted item is marked in progress while the agent works; items are checked off when each step completes
Manual control — add, check/uncheck, and remove tasks by hand at any time
Always-visible context — the board persists across mode changes so you can track agent progress in real time
Active plan items are automatically injected into every prompt so the agent stays on track

🔐 Default Mode — Interactive Permission Prompts

The default permission mode now actually asks before acting instead of silently approving everything. When the agent wants to edit a file or run a command, a permission card appears with:

The tool and file/command being requested
✓ Allow — lets the action proceed
✗ Deny — blocks the action and tells the agent it was denied

📌 Persistent Mode Description Bar

The mode description bar no longer auto-dismisses after 5 seconds. It stays visible until you close it with the ✕ button, so you always have a reminder of what the current mode does. It also appears automatically on startup.

⌨️ `/mode` Slash Command

Type /mode in the chat input to see all five permission modes and their descriptions listed in the autocomplete dropdown — no more guessing what each mode does.

🐛 Bug Fixes

acceptEdits Bash — Bash commands now run in acceptEdits mode without being blocked
Diff tab race condition — agent-edited files always open a diff tab, even when the file-read response arrives after the edit completes
New file diffs — when the agent creates a brand-new file it now opens in a diff tab showing the full new content

What's New in v2.0

🗂️ 3-Column IDE Layout (Electron app)

The Electron app has been completely redesigned into a VS Code-inspired 3-column IDE layout:

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  ✦ FreeCode  [session]  [Model ▾] [Mode ▾]  [History] [⚙]  │  ← Titlebar
├─────────────────┬──────────────────────┬─────────────────────┤
│   CHAT (left)   │  EDITOR (middle)     │  EXPLORER (right)   │
│                 │                      │                      │
│  messages       │  [tab][tab][tab ✕]   │  WORKSPACE/          │
│  ...            │  ──────────────────  │  ▶ src/              │
│  tool cards     │  syntax-highlighted  │    ├ main.js         │
│                 │  file content        │    └ preload.js      │
│  ─────────────  │  OR diff view        │  ▶ renderer/         │
│  [input area]   │                      │    ├ index.html      │
│  [stats bar]    │  [✓ Accept][✗ Reject]│    └ chat.js         │
│                 │  (on diff tabs)      │                      │
│                 │                      │  [+File][+Folder][↺] │
└─────────────────┴──────────────────────┴─────────────────────┘
   ↑ drag to resize ↑                  ↑ drag to resize ↑

Draggable resize handles between each column (persisted across restarts)
Panel collapse: Ctrl+B hides/shows the chat column; Ctrl+Shift+E toggles the explorer

📑 Editor Tabs (middle column)

Click any file in the Explorer to open it in the editor panel
Multiple tabs with × close buttons — Ctrl+W closes the active tab
Tabs persist file content and diff state independently

⚡ Diff View with Accept / Reject

When the agent edits a file a diff tab opens automatically:

🔴 Removed lines in red, 🟢 added lines in green
✓ Accept — keeps the new content and converts to a normal view
✗ Reject — writes the original content back via writeFile IPC and closes the diff tab

🔗 Clickable File Links in Chat

File names and paths that the agent mentions in its replies are automatically rendered as clickable links (shown with an accent-coloured border):

Click any inline path like `renderer/chat.js` → opens the file in the editor panel
If the agent just edited that file, clicking it jumps straight to the diff tab so you can see exactly what changed
Works for relative paths (resolved against the current workspace), absolute paths, and plain filenames with known extensions

🖱️ File Explorer Context Menu

Right-click any file or folder to get:

Action	Description
Open in Editor	Opens the file in a new editor tab
New File	Prompts for a name and creates an empty file
New Folder	Prompts for a name and creates a directory
Rename	Renames the entry in-place
Delete	Confirms then permanently deletes
Copy Path	Copies the absolute path to the clipboard
Add to Chat Context	Injects the file into the active chat prompt

⌨️ New Keyboard Shortcuts

Shortcut	Action
`Ctrl+B`	Toggle chat panel (left column)
`Ctrl+Shift+E`	Toggle file explorer (right column)
`Ctrl+W`	Close the active editor tab

What's New in v1.6

⚙️ In-app Settings Panel (Electron app)

The Electron app now has a full Settings Panel accessible via the ⚙ button in the header — no more opening the raw userData folder. Configure everything from one place:

Workspace folder — browse and change your project directory
Model & Agent — model selector, permission mode, max turns, show/hide tool output toggle
API Keys — set or update Anthropic/OpenAI/Google and NVIDIA NIM keys in-app
Custom Providers — add any OpenAI-compatible endpoint with models and headers
About — link to GitHub and quick access to your data folder

📁 File Explorer (Electron app)

A new Files button in the header opens a collapsible file-tree panel showing your workspace directory:

Expand/collapse folders with a click
Click any file to open it in the built-in file viewer
+ button on hover adds any file directly to the agent's context

👁️ File Viewer (Electron app)

Click a file in the explorer to open it in a modal viewer with:

Full file content rendered in a monospace font
Add to Context button — instantly injects the file into the current chat prompt
500 KB size guard to keep the UI responsive

What's New in v1.5

✏️ Edit diff view — see every file change highlighted

When the agent edits a file the tool card auto-expands and shows a full red/green diff, just like VS Code's built-in diff viewer:

🔴 Removed lines highlighted in red with a strikethrough
🟢 Added lines highlighted in green
Computed from old_string vs new_string so you always know exactly what changed

📄 Read tool — line-range in header

The Read tool card now shows filename.js · lines 1–50 in the header so you can see at a glance exactly which part of a file the agent inspected.

⚡ Bash live streaming + interactive stdin

Live output — Bash output streams token-by-token to the tool card while the process runs instead of appearing only after it finishes.
Interactive stdin — while a command is running an input bar appears at the bottom of the card. Type and press ↵ Send (or Enter) to send text to the process's standard input — perfect for CLIs that prompt for confirmation, passwords, or answers.

Quick Start

VS Code extension

cd vscode-extension
npm install
npm run package          # builds freecode-1.5.0.vsix
code --install-extension freecode-1.5.0.vsix

Set your API key: freeCode: Set API Key in the Command Palette.

Standalone Windows app

cd electron-app
npm install
npm start

CLI (Node.js)

export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...
cd v2
node src/index.mjs "explain this codebase"

Supported AI Providers

Provider	Environment variable	Notes
Anthropic (recommended)	`ANTHROPIC_API_KEY`	All Claude models
OpenAI	`OPENAI_API_KEY`	GPT-4o, o1, o3
Google	`GOOGLE_API_KEY` / `GEMINI_API_KEY`	Gemini 2.0
NVIDIA NIM	`NVIDIA_API_KEY`	Kimi K2.5, Qwen, Llama, DeepSeek R1
Custom	Stored in settings	Any OpenAI-compatible endpoint

Add custom providers (OpenRouter, local LLMs, NVIDIA Kimi, NVIDIA Qwen, etc.) directly from the Settings panel without touching environment variables.

Tools

The agent has access to 25+ built-in tools:

Category	Tools
Files	Read, Write, Edit, MultiEdit, Glob, Grep, LS, NotebookEdit
Shell	Bash (live streaming, interactive stdin, background jobs)
Web	WebFetch, WebSearch
Agents	Agent (sub-agents, team/multi-agent, phases), Skill, SendMessage, RemoteTrigger
Tasks	TodoWrite, CronCreate, CronDelete, CronList
Dev	LSP, EnterWorktree, ExitWorktree
User	AskUser
Discovery	ToolSearch, ReadMcpResource

Architecture

┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│  VS Code Extension / Electron App / CLI                  │
│  (chat.js + chat.css — same UI in all three front-ends)  │
└──────────────────────┬───────────────────────────────────┘
                       │  events (stream_event, tool_progress,
                       │          tool_meta, tool_stream, result, …)
                       ▼
            v2/src/core/agent-loop.mjs
            (async generator — 13 event types)
                       │
          ┌────────────┴────────────┐
          │                         │
   v2/src/tools/          v2/src/permissions/
   (25+ tools)            (6 modes + interactive prompts)
          │
   Anthropic / OpenAI / Google / NVIDIA / Custom API

The VS Code extension spawns agent-bridge.mjs as a Node.js subprocess. The Electron app imports the agent loop in-process (no subprocess needed — the Electron binary is not Node.js).

License

MIT

Name		Name	Last commit message	Last commit date
Latest commit History 116 Commits
electron-app		electron-app
v2		v2
vscode-extension		vscode-extension
README.md		README.md

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