Continue vs Kilo Code (2026): Copilot or Autonomous Agent?

How they actually differ

Continue and Kilo Code both target IDE developers but they make opposite bets about who owns the loop.

Continue is an assistive IDE plugin. Chat in the sidebar, inline edits, autocomplete, slash commands. Strong VS Code and JetBrains integration, configurable across providers, large library of recipes. Best when you want fast in-flow help while you stay at the keyboard. The agent capabilities exist but the gravity is still assistive.

Kilo Code is an autonomous agent forked from Roo Code (which forked from Cline). Runs in VS Code, JetBrains, and the CLI. You hand it a task, it reads files, writes files, runs commands, iterates until the task is done or the budget is hit. The interface is heavier but the autonomy is real. Best for tasks you can describe in a sentence and walk away from.

Where the trade-off bites: Continue wins on velocity inside your editor when you are actively coding. Kilo Code wins on tasks that would otherwise pull you off the keyboard (mechanical refactors, scaffolding, repeated edits, fix-this-failing-test loops). Different jobs.

Where Respan fits. Either tool routes cleanly through the Respan gateway for unified provider keys, per-developer cost tracking, and model swapping. See the proxy coding agents cookbook for the setup.