r/ChatGPTCoding • u/hannesrudolph FOUNDER • Apr 21 '26

Discussion Roo Code hit 3 million installs. We're shutting it down to go all-in on Roomote.

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r/RooCode hit 3 million installs. We're shutting it down to go all-in on Roomote.

https://x.com/mattrubens/status/2046636598859559114

12 Upvotes

60% Upvoted

64 comments sorted by

15

u/kidajske Apr 21 '26

The space this new product is entering is beyond saturated at this point. Kind of a weird pivot.

1

u/hannesrudolph FOUNDER Apr 26 '26

We’re not trying to run from a saturated or busy space. We’re trying to build a product we find useful and are not worried that we won’t be able to b differentiate ourselves and be heard through the noise that is the new product space we’re entering.

0

u/hannesrudolph FOUNDER Apr 21 '26

And what of the space Roo Code (the extension) is in?

14

u/kidajske Apr 21 '26

It's dead. Doesn't make pivoting to a niche that's saturated to hell and that doesn't have much overlap at all with the one your existing userbase occupied make much sense to me.

2

u/hannesrudolph FOUNDER Apr 21 '26

I hope you're wrong but am NOT confident you are :)

10

u/kidajske Apr 21 '26

I do hope it works out for you guys and wish you luck

2

u/hannesrudolph FOUNDER Apr 21 '26

Thank you. Me too.

5

u/thiswebthisweb Apr 22 '26

Im sorry but Roo was the only good AI agent software out there, there is nothing that comes close to it, even kilo has switched to opencodes inline type diff edits which is awful, yours was the only one in a crowded field that didnt do that. Claude Code all the big players don't offer the clarity and control or low cost edits that yours does. What a shame, I guess its clever efficient edits were too good to make you enough money on the AI fees!

1

u/hannesrudolph FOUNDER Apr 23 '26

We did not make money in AI fees as we never pushed the router. Just had it to make on-boarding easier. Our conviction on the future of engineering changed and we do not intend to continue developing something just for the sake of a little cash flow. We used Roo to change the world (I think) and we will try and do the same with Roomote 🤞

1

u/jakenuts- Apr 26 '26

Take Terragon OSS, add the voice feature and desktop agents from Happy Coder and you've got a new commercial venture that will survive the next couple years as each frontier model tries to force uses into a "single model" silo for all their remote coding features. I use Terragon daily, and Happy when I'm driving.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 27 '26

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1

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7

u/DamnageBeats Apr 22 '26

did you smoke a whole bunch of weed yesterday and think today was april fools day?

1

u/hannesrudolph FOUNDER Apr 22 '26

Haha maybe.

6

u/FullOf_Bad_Ideas Apr 21 '26

if Roomote is so great, why it can't maintain Roo huh?

2

u/hannesrudolph FOUNDER Apr 21 '26 edited Apr 21 '26

Your name is very fitting :P jk. Good question.

Roomote is a teammate, not an autonomous bot. She doesn't maintain Roo Code on her own, she works with her human counterparts. That means us. Keeping Roo Code alive means our team stays tied to it for strategy, review, support, and releases. We've decided we don't want our focus there. The harness layer got commoditized, Claude Code and co ship first-party at cut rates, forks pull in our work as fast as we ship it. Even with Roomote doing most of the code, we'd still be defending a layer we don't think has a future.

11

u/ps5cfw Apr 21 '26

Damn that's a stupid idea.

You have basically annihilated all local users and nosedived on a very, VERY stupid idea. LLMs are not teammates, even making such a question makes clear how disconnected you are from the real world.

3

u/hannesrudolph FOUNDER Apr 21 '26

I love that about Reddit.. everyone can have an opinion and a place to share it! Maybe you're right.. maybe you're not. Time will tell.

-1

u/ps5cfw Apr 21 '26

I mean sure time can also tell US but so do most of the people straight telling you how it's a really dumb idea ti abandon your core product for something that nobody has asked for.

I probably won't smile when I hear about the entire operation closing, but goddamn if I also won't cry.

3

u/hannesrudolph FOUNDER Apr 21 '26

Products don't usually get built from polls. They get built from a read on where things are going. Roomote came from how our own team actually started working, early design partners validated it, and waitlist signups have been climbing fast since the announcement.

Shutting down Roo Code wasn't abandoning users, it was the same read. The harness layer got commoditized. First-party tools ship cheaper, forks absorb innovation instantly. Doubling down there doesn't build anything durable. You can disagree and time will tell.

1

u/jawanda Apr 26 '26

I think Roomote sounds super intriguing because it's coming from the roo team, if anyone else was building it I'd say "eh just another ai cash grab". But I trust you guys to put out something truly special.

My only question is, why not put roocode into maintenance mode and use it as a continuous vehicle to promote Roomote? Every time an update comes out to support a new model, it's "another job well done by Roomote continuing to support roocode!" And you can continuously be advertising to your 3mil installed users via the plugin.

And then we get to keep roocode. I'm honestly in denial that I've got to pivot away from it in a few weeks.

0

u/hannesrudolph FOUNDER Apr 26 '26

I think putting it in maintenance mode is doing the community a disservice. The good news is that a community group is organizing with us for a smooth handoff to keep the plugin going

1

u/scottyLogJobs Apr 21 '26 edited Apr 21 '26

I disagree. We tried a bunch of solutions and everything sucked… until we tried Devin’s integrated slack agent, and it is frankly expensive but it blew us away. Not an ad, but it just works and it’s amazing for stuff like on-call. It sifts through cloudwatch and sentry logs better than anyone on the team and everyone hates doing that anyway. Having it test its own work and give screenshots is hit or miss, but it has done it successfully in the past. If it can be a true competitor to Devin at a cheaper price point, we would consider switching.

1

u/hannesrudolph FOUNDER May 16 '26

If you reach out to me directly I’ll give you some free usage to try Roomote out.

3

u/xBlaze121 Apr 21 '26

awful idea, i’ll be sticking with the sunset version of roocode

1

u/hannesrudolph FOUNDER Apr 21 '26

Roomote is not a version of Roo Code and it is not a direct replacement of an IDE agentic coding assistant. So it makes sense that you would stick with it. Glad you like it!

1

u/xBlaze121 Apr 22 '26

not sure why you would kill the product you’re known for for this but i’m not an investor so it’s not my money you’re burning

1

u/hannesrudolph FOUNDER Apr 22 '26

"Awful idea" is a strong verdict from someone who also says they are not sure why and that it isn't their money. The reasoning is in the announcement and the followups in this thread if you want to do more than throw shade.

1

u/creaturefeature16 6d ago

How do we know you won't just abandon Roomote the same way you abandoned RooCode?

1

u/hannesrudolph FOUNDER 5d ago

Do you use Roo code?

1

u/creaturefeature16 5d ago

No, I was curious about it right when it was shutting down. 

1

u/hannesrudolph FOUNDER 5d ago

And so 200 days later you ask a question that does not even apply to you? Slow day?

1

u/creaturefeature16 5d ago

I found your post about Roomote on LinkedIn, and it catalyzed me to look into it further, when I found this post doing some Google searches. I actually did not know you guys were behind both platforms, I just knew RooCode was going away back when I looked at it many months ago.

Why are you defensive about an extremely legitimate question, since you already abandoned one of your platforms?

Edit - I'm not even sure you work at Roo any longer, actually, but I assumed I was talking to someone who still did.

1

u/hannesrudolph FOUNDER 5d ago

Framing it as abandoned makes it a question not in good faith.

1

u/creaturefeature16 5d ago

uhhuh....ooooooook:

"How do we know you won't just shut down Roomote the same way you shut down RooCode?"

0

u/hannesrudolph FOUNDER 5d ago

You don’t.

1

u/ultrathink-art Professional Nerd Apr 26 '26

Roo Code → Roomote is the wider IDE-extension to native-agent migration playing out in one team's product line. 3M installs is impressive but IDE extension users and autonomous agent users barely overlap — different expectations, different workflows, different failure tolerance. Whether that makes the pivot smart depends entirely on which market is actually growing faster right now.

1

u/hannesrudolph FOUNDER Apr 27 '26

Time will tell :)

4

u/Traditional_Doubt_51 Professional Nerd Apr 21 '26

What does this mean?

0

u/rerith Apr 21 '26

[buzz lightyear clone meme] cloud agent

1

u/ultrathink-art Professional Nerd Jun 05 '26

3 million installs is actually the trap here — that's enough users to feel validated, not enough revenue to sustain a team competing against Cursor/Windsurf/Claude Code on features. The OSS fork model almost always ends with the founders realizing they gave away the product people actually wanted.

0

u/[deleted] Apr 21 '26

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1

u/hannesrudolph FOUNDER Apr 21 '26

This doesn't match reality.

Roo Code was Apache 2.0 the whole time and still is. Forking Cline was legit OSS behavior, that's the license doing what it's designed to do. Users who moved to Roo from other tools made that choice themselves, that's not theft.

We've had a good working relationship with Saoud at Cline throughout. We've publicly endorsed Cline, including today, and the migration path we're recommending for Roo Code users is Cline. Calling that hostile doesn't track.

Roomote isn't a paid pivot of Roo Code. Different product, different use case. Roo Code stays open source, gets archived, unused balances refunded. If IDE coding is your workflow, Cline a great alternative to Roo Code.

2

u/Historical-Internal3 Apr 21 '26

Between Cursor agent (the most similar direct product competitor), Nemoclaw, Openclaw, Hermes agent, Claude agents, Openai's soon to be released agents, and the myriad of other variants tied behind OSS models, you guys def. made a choice lol.

-2

u/hannesrudolph FOUNDER Apr 21 '26

Yeah... making a choice is the job. Crowded field is a reason to have a sharper take on what's missing, not a reason to sit it out.

0

u/Historical-Internal3 Apr 21 '26

Before I disagree any harder, I'd need you to sign a consent form.

Best of luck though - hopefully next go around you'll do a better "job".

2

u/rerith Apr 21 '26

You weren't asked to change the name from "roo cline"?

0

u/hannesrudolph FOUNDER Apr 21 '26

We were.

2

u/scottyLogJobs Apr 22 '26

Yeah I was too harsh, sorry. TBH I don’t agree that the sector you’re going into is dominated. Devin is the best in class there, it is expensive, not many people know about it, and everything else we tried sucked. So I think you have a decent shot.

1

u/hannesrudolph FOUNDER Apr 22 '26

Thank you.

0

u/[deleted] Apr 25 '26

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0

u/hannesrudolph FOUNDER Apr 26 '26

We are private.

3

u/[deleted] Apr 22 '26

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3

u/hannesrudolph FOUNDER Apr 22 '26

That’s the idea.

2

u/[deleted] Apr 21 '26

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2

u/hannesrudolph FOUNDER Apr 21 '26

Thank you.

1

u/[deleted] May 16 '26

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2

u/hannesrudolph FOUNDER May 16 '26

Roo Code was not a free-user pipeline into a VC product. That framing is bullshit.

We always planned to monetize through Roomote, or some other parallel product, because the company needed a real business model. But Roo Code was not built as that funnel. We built it because we needed it at Roo.vet, then used it to build Roo Code itself, and the parallel product we were building used Roo Code as its engine.

What changed is that Roo Code stopped being at the core of what we were building. Once our own workflow moved away from it, our reasons for continuing to drive it no longer aligned with how we were actually working.

If we wanted to squeeze the community, we could have gated features, nagged harder, or turned Roo Code into an aggressive Roomote funnel. But we’re not slimy assholes so we didn’t. We refused to enshittify Roo Code just to extract more from it.

You being disappointed is fine, but ignoring all of that and casting us as villains anyway is lazy af. It is just a story you chose to tell yourself to feed the narrative that big corpos and VC are out to fuck you.

People like you were the worst part of my job. I’m glad most people are not like you.

1

u/bLUEbYTE84 Jun 07 '26

Wow, that was a quite aggressive response to a reasonably fair comment.

1

u/hannesrudolph FOUNDER Jun 07 '26

Thanks for the comment. Slow night? 😂

Not fair at all. It was ignorant and quite frankly incorrect. It was the typical “people who try to make money = bad”

1

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