How to Set Up Continue.dev as a Local AI Coding Assistant

Install Ollama for your operating system and start the service with ollama serve .

Pull the required models: a 7B code model for autocomplete, a larger model for chat, and an embeddings model.

Install the Continue.dev extension or plugin in VS Code, JetBrains, or Neovim.

Create the ~/.continue/config.json file with your model provider, context providers, and slash commands.

Configure tab autocomplete settings including debounce delay, max tokens, and temperature for low-latency suggestions.

Enable context providers like @codebase , @file , and @terminal for codebase-aware prompts.

Add custom slash commands for team workflows such as code review and test generation.

Version-control your config.json in a dotfiles repository, omitting any API keys.

AI coding assistants have reshaped how developers write software, but they route proprietary source code through third-party cloud services and carry recurring subscription costs.…