Cline CLI is an autonomous coding agent for interactive terminal sessions.

Install

Install the Cline CLI. For the IDE extension, see Cline.

npm install -g cline

Note

If Cline CLI is not installed and npm is available, ollama launch cline will prompt to install cline@latest.

Usage with Ollama

Quick setup

ollama launch cline

When launched through ollama launch cline, Ollama sets Cline's provider to Ollama, points it at the local Ollama endpoint, and selects the model you choose.

To configure without launching:

ollama launch cline --config

Run directly with a model

ollama launch cline --model qwen3.5

To use a cloud model:

ollama launch cline --model kimi-k2.6:cloud

Pass a prompt to Cline

Arguments after -- are passed directly to Cline:

ollama launch cline -- "summarize this repository"

To open Cline's Kanban board:

ollama launch cline -- kanban

Manual setup

To configure Cline CLI manually, first make sure Ollama is running and the model you want to use is available:

ollama pull qwen3.5

Then run Cline's interactive auth flow:

cline auth

Select Ollama as the provider, use http://localhost:11434 as the base URL if prompted, and choose a model such as qwen3.5 or kimi-k2.6:cloud.

To check the current Cline configuration:

cline config

To start an interactive session:

cline