What is Kilo Code for VS Code?

Spending less time on boilerplate and more time solving interesting problems is a common goal for developers. Kilo Code integrates directly into your Visual Studio Code environment, acting as an AI assistant to help you write, fix, and improve code more efficiently through a simple chat interface. It leverages fast AI models, like Claude 3.7 Sonnet, to understand your requests and interact intelligently with your workspace.

Think of Kilo Code as a pair programmer ready to assist. It can generate code from your descriptions, help untangle complex functions, suggest improvements, and even automate some of the more tedious aspects of coding, letting you focus on building great software.

Key Features

💬 Generate Code via Chat: Describe the logic or function you need in natural language. Kilo Code translates your instructions into code snippets, helping you get started faster or overcome blocks.
✨ Refactor and Improve Code: Select existing code and ask Kilo to optimize it for performance, enhance readability, or identify potential bugs. It’s a helpful second pair of eyes for refining your work.
⚡ Accelerate Typing with Smart Completion: Receive context-aware code suggestions as you type, reducing typos and speeding up the implementation of common patterns.
🤖 Automate Repetitive Tasks: Instruct Kilo to handle boilerplate setup, generate standard configurations, or script recurring coding patterns, saving you valuable time.
📂 Interact with Your Workspace: Beyond just suggesting code, Kilo can create new files or modify existing ones based on your chat instructions, directly within your project structure.
⚙️ Run Terminal Commands: Ask Kilo to execute command-line operations directly from the chat interface, keeping you in your coding flow without context switching.

Use Cases

Scaffolding a New Feature: You're starting a new React component. Instead of writing the basic structure from scratch, you tell Kilo: "Create a functional React component named UserProfileCard that accepts name, email, and avatarUrl as props and displays them." Kilo generates the initial file and code structure directly in your project.
Debugging Complex Logic: You're facing a tricky bug in a Python script involving data manipulation. You paste the function into the Kilo chat and ask, "Can you identify potential issues or edge cases in this function? Explain the logic flow." Kilo analyzes the code, highlights potential problems, and provides an explanation to help you pinpoint the error.
Setting Up a Module: You need to add a new service to your Node.js application, requiring a specific file structure (e.g., service.js, service.test.js) and running an initialization command. You instruct Kilo: "Create files authService.js and authService.test.js in the /services directory, and then run npm install jsonwebtoken in the terminal." Kilo performs these actions sequentially.

Conclusion

Kilo Code aims to make your coding sessions more productive and less tedious by bringing intelligent AI assistance directly into VS Code. By handling code generation, refactoring, automation, and even workspace interactions through a conversational interface, it frees you up to concentrate on the creative and complex aspects of software development. With a generous free tier and an open-source foundation, it's easy to try out and see how it fits your needs.

More information on Kilo Code for VS Code

Launched

2025-03

Pricing Model

Free

Starting Price

Global Rank

37540

Month Visit

1.8M

Tech used

Next.js,Vercel,Gzip,OpenGraph,Progressive Web App,Webpack,HSTS

Top 5 Countries

17.05%

7.74%

4.77%

4.6%

4.21%

India United States Vietnam Pakistan China

Traffic Sources

27.76%

1.63%

0.08%

21.08%

27.76%

21.67%

social paidReferrals mail referrals search direct

Source: Similarweb (Sep 25, 2025)

Kilo Code for VS Code was manually vetted by our editorial team and was first featured on 2025-03-28.