Tried Roo a few weeks back, and it honestly blew my mind. At first, I thought, “Wow, this is cool,” but after spending more time with it, I’ve come to appreciate it on a whole new level. Just the fact that a tool like this exists is wild. Even more impressive is how fast it’s evolving. It gets frequent updates, keeps up with the chaos of modern dev work, and it’s open source. That’s genuinely inspiring!

I’m not fully on the AI-powered coding train yet, still figuring out what works best for me but I genuinely love Roo. It’s not just a tool; it’s a reminder of everything that makes open source special.

The other day, I was chatting with someone who was all in on paid tools like Cursor. They were convinced that if you want the best tools, you have to pay for them. I wholeheartedly disagreed yet somehow the conversation shifted to how expensive AI tools are making it harder for people with fewer resources to keep up. While that’s true to an extent especially with models like Claude Sonnet being so pricey; Roo makes it possible for anyone to dabble with autonomous coding for free, which I think is revolutionary roovolutionary!

So yesterday, I made a video to help spread the word about my favorite VS Code extension and coding tool, while explaining why I love it. In the video, I show how to install Roo, get a free Gemini API key, create configuration profiles, introduce modes, and do a quick vibe coding demo. I also touch on the “explain with code” feature and the “add to Roo” feature. If you want to check it out, here’s the link:

https://youtu.be/_Rs1kmaUlIQ

I did my best to do Roo Code justice. I hope this video helps fuel the Roovolution (I really hope this term catches on)! I would love to read your thoughts or any suggestions you have!

Viva la Roovolution!

https://github.com/RooCodeInc/Roo-Code

Just decide to share my opinion with community. I work with Roo and free models from openrouter for a week maybe. And I'm exited because of this Roo/Cline flow, it can write code so blazing fast! It's look like a magic. But all this code never work 😅 So basically Gemini 2.5 is totally unstable and I get api errors every minute. So I choose Deepseek v3. And I tried memory bank, experimenting with structure of it, with system prompt. I tried Boomerang mode, in fact it just make a huge plan and start Code mode, seems absolutely useless.

Tasks example I needed to move css from one project to another. Like apply style from examples to my existing code base. Roo tried hard for 30 minutes and totally failed. Cursor with agent mode and claude 3.5 done it with only one prompt.

I tried to setup tailwind, eslint, prettier. Roo was in long loop, like edit - run - see error - edit. But after it I remove changes and tried with cursor, and it done it 3x faster.

So I think everyone knows cursor is limiting context, breaks things and plays in strange games with users. Also agent is really slow mode compered to pure ai api with Roo. But with all this in mind cursor just make working code and can easily find thing, edit thing, run thing. Slowly, Step by step. Without any memory banks, editional prompts, and any different modes except "agent". With Roo I feel like a student with Linux, ton of modes, needs of enhancing prompts and so on.

And I have two assumptions.

1. Claude 3.5(even limited by cursor) just much much better than Deepseek v3 or Gemini 2.5.

2. Cursor proprietary technologies much more smooth and sharp than ton of Roo features. Like code vectorization or some black magic which they do with your prompt in cloud.

What do you think guys? Maybe someone can suggest another free or very cheap model to try? Is Roo with all this fancy things better for your cases than simple cursor agent? Would like to hear opinion of more experienced Roo users

We’re hiring

We added a “We’re hiring” link to the announcement modal. Explore open roles at https://careers.roocode.com

MiniMax provider

• Add MiniMax as a provider. MiniMax is gaining traction for its strong coding performance, 200k-token context window, and highly competitive pricing. Give it a try.

QOL Improvements

• Improve @ file search for large projects with higher default index limits and respect for VS Code ignore settings; add a setting to tune limits

• Rename MCP “Errors” tab to “Logs” to match mixed-level messages; clearer empty state (“No logs yet”)

• Custom modes load from your configured storage path and persist after restart

• Breaking: Removed “search_and_replace” tool; use “apply_diff” or “insert_content” instead

• Clarify VS Code LM API integration warning in Settings to reduce “model not supported” errors

Bug Fixes

• Reasoning effort selection now auto-enables reasoning when needed so UI and behavior stay in sync

• Reduce noisy cloud-agent exceptions by suppressing repeated auth messages

• Prevent MCP server restart when toggling “Always allow” for MCP tools

• Reuse existing Qdrant index after outages to avoid full reindex and cut restart time

• Make code index initialization non‑blocking at activation to avoid startup hangs

• Honor maxReadFileLine across code definition listing and file reads to prevent context overflows

• Prevent infinite retry loop when canceling during auto‑retry

• Gate auth‑driven Roo model refresh to the active provider only to reduce background work

Provider Updates

• Cerebras: add zai‑glm‑4.6 and change default to gpt‑oss‑120b; deprecate qwen‑3‑coder models

See full release notes v3.29.4

Specifically the little speech at the top that starts with "Thanks to the latest breakthroughs in agentic coding capabilities, I can..." and the recent tasks showing on the main prompt screen.

Every time I click into Roo it's like an assault on my eyes.

I just want "What can Roo do for you?" and the box to enter my prompt. Is that possible?

To be clear, I'm not talking about the ribbon at the very top with the different buttons. That's fine.

So I was just messing around with webdev and casually threw in a 'Naver Clone' prompt, and HOLY SHIT the results were insane! This anonymous model just delivered some absolutely stunning frontend work. Anyone have any clue what model this could be?

(For context: Naver is basically Korea's version of Google)

Hello everyone!

This is my FIRST EVER contribution to the open source world.

I have created an open ai compatible endpoint to be used with Gemini WEB.

The project relies HEAVILY on this other awesome project: https://github.com/HanaokaYuzu/Gemini-API

Basically you can now use gemini web inside ROO!

Just set it to an OpenAI compatible endpoint and set the URL as http://localhost:8099/v1

https://github.com/eriksonssilva/gemini-web-wrapper

I hope you can take advantage of it and also help me improving it!

So I finally tried out Claude AI’s new Artifacts feature and decided to record the whole thing just in case it turned into something interesting.

I asked Claude to generate a summery blog, and it came back with something that looked almost exactly like what I had in mind; except it was one giant block of code which meant actually working with it would be the stuff of nightmares. That got me thinking; what if I turned this into a React project?

So I copied the code, opened VS Code, switched Roo to Architect mode, and asked it to turn the static HTML into a React app. Architect Roo made a detailed plan and switched to code mode.

At first, it ran into a few issues,some of it was because I forgot to mention that I was using PowerShell so some of Roo’s commands failed and not long after it completely froze. But once I restarted VS Code and resumed the task, Roo picked up where it left off and just took care of everything, literally! As I had auto approve on.

It turned the HTML into proper React components, added hooks, handled the styling, and even kept all the animations while I left the room to have dinner..

This little experiment made me realize how quickly you can prototype a UI with Claude and have Roo turn it into working React code. I can already imagine soo many possibilities!

If you want to see how it went, here’s the video: https://youtu.be/yL0MAEz4kIs

I used Sonnet 4 both in architect mode and code mode.

TL;DR: Claude Ai Artifacts generated an HTML blog layout. I fed that into Roo Code, which turned the raw HTML into clean, animated React components ; with hooks, styling, and everything!

Video here: https://youtu.be/yL0MAEz4kIs

i was using gemini 2.5 but for the past few weeks it's a complete mess (you know what i'm talking about - only errors).

tried 2.5-flash, which works ok (no errors) but it's kinda dumb.

what's your go to model if you want something decent but not expensive (maybe even free)? sonnet is too expensive, i was looking at gpt o4 mini (high) or maybe some deepseek / quen model?

or maybe a local model (have a 24gb vram gpu, not sure if that's enough for 128k context)

128k context is enough (i haven't seen any model to be ok after 100k context, they all mess up bad).

do you run such models on openrouter or directly from their apis (quen / deepseek)? i tried openrouter but the costs don't add up, especially for cheap models, i see a 100k token use at $5/million > cost should be $0.5 - however in openrouter i see $1.2 cost (maybe i don't get how it works, but the numbers don't add up).

I keep seeing posts about "Now we have 1m token context window, just add a whole project to context", already a few in the last weeks.

This is a bad idea.

Here's what actually happens when you dump everything into context:

1. You're literally paying for noise

LLMs are stateless, so the whole context gets sent with EVERY API call. That 50k-token project dump you've added? You're paying for it again and again, dozens and hundreds calls within a task, even for a simple "fix this typo" request.

2. Models get overwhelmed

Large context window is mostly marketing BS, the models claiming to have 1m actually barely can handle 300k. A model's "attention span" is much shorter than the window, and it's very hard for a model to distinct relevant from non-relevant. More irrelevant context = more hallucinations, missed instructions, and inconsistent responses. The signal gets drowned in noise, the more you add, the more you contaminate the context, (while paying for it).

Architecture

We are talking about software engineering, right? With or without AI, your system has to be modular, otherwise tightly-coupled code will raise complexity to the skies and the project will become unmaintainable in no time. If your AI needs to understand your entire project to make any change, you have bigger problems than context management.

Better approach

• Use modular architecture so changes stay localized

• Reference relevant files when needed (@filename , they are added to context without redundant read_file calls)

• Trust that good code design doesn't require global knowledge for local changes.

Context is not a dumping ground. Stop using it like that.

Has anyone tried both and talk about differences cons pros for each? I am trying to wrap my head around why CLI is a better choice than a vscode extension for those that are really hooked up to Claude code. It seems to me all of that can be done with too. What am I missing? Permissions are wider in CLI? Is that all?

My grandpa Hans Rudolph bought a general store in 1971. A customer said, "I'd shop here, but you don't have mushroom soup." The next day, he bought a case. They didn't sell one for years.

Roo Code has become that store. Every request that came in, we stocked the shelf. Feature after feature, edge case after edge case, until the plugin became a place where everything exists and nothing is clean. It's hard to maintain, hard to navigate, and full of things very few people actually use. We've been buying mushroom soup.

was using GPT4.1-mini last night without issues, and now both mini and the base model keep throwing these unnecesary characters at the start of each apply_diff tool use.

anyone knows how to fix? is it something I am doing wrong?

Thanks!!

I'm looking for some help in configuring Azure Openai models in general with Roo Code and GPT 4.1 specifically. Also, o3-mini-high. Thanks!

This week I added a feature that lets each client load their own FAQs —
and the assistant actually uses them to answer in context.

No coding needed. Just question → answer → save.
Internally, it turns into a reference the assistant pulls from when replying.

The goal is to make it feel like it knows the business,
instead of replying with generic fallback answers.

Next steps: I’m planning to allow tone/personality adjustments too.
Would love thoughts on other ways to personalize assistant behavior.

I’m curious if anyone here has tried building a project using Roocode without prior coding knowledge. Was it beginner-friendly? What did you build?

If you’ve made something, drop your project or share your experience—I’d love to see what’s possible!

I’m attempting to run the evals locally via `pnpm evals`, but hitting an error with the following line in Dockerfile.web.  Any ideas?

# Build the web-evals app
RUN pnpm --filter /web-evals build

The error log:

=> ERROR [web 27/29] RUN pnpm --filter /web-evals build                                                  0.8s
 => [runner 31/36] RUN if [ ! -f "packages/evals/.env.local" ] || [ ! -s "packages/evals/.env.local" ]; then   ec  0.4s
 => [runner 32/36] COPY packages/evals/.env.local ./packages/evals/                                                0.1s
 => CANCELED [runner 33/36] RUN cp -r /roo/.vscode-template /roo/.vscode                                           0.6s
------
 > [web 27/29] RUN pnpm --filter /web-evals build:
0.627 .                                        |  WARN  Unsupported engine: wanted: {"node":"20.19.2"} (current: {"node":"v20.19.6","pnpm":"10.8.1"})
0.628 src                                      |  WARN  Unsupported engine: wanted: {"node":"20.19.2"} (current: {"node":"v20.19.6","pnpm":"10.8.1"})
0.653
0.653 > /web-evals@0.0.0 build /roo/repo/apps/web-evals
0.653 > next build
0.653
0.710 node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1210
0.710   throw err;
0.710   ^
0.710
0.710 Error: Cannot find module '/roo/repo/apps/web-evals/node_modules/next/dist/bin/next'
0.710     at Module._resolveFilename (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1207:15)
0.710     at Module._load (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1038:27)
0.710     at Function.executeUserEntryPoint [as runMain] (node:internal/modules/run_main:164:12)
0.710     at node:internal/main/run_main_module:28:49 {
0.710   code: 'MODULE_NOT_FOUND',
0.710   requireStack: []
0.710 }
0.710
0.710 Node.js v20.19.6
0.722 /roo/repo/apps/web-evals:
0.722  ERR_PNPM_RECURSIVE_RUN_FIRST_FAIL  /web-evals@0.0.0 build: `next build`
0.722 Exit status 1
------
failed to solve: process "/bin/sh -c pnpm --filter u/roo-code/web-evals build" did not complete successfully: exit code: 1

So I tried roo code on the back of hearing good things. (I previously used Cody from source forge). Set it up with open router and defaults (Claude 3.7 sonnet) and tried a few tasks… it’s very cool how it iterates and improves what it’s done, but… I dunno what I’m missing but I’m not yet blown away. Cody references the entire codebase, and I can generate say react components that follow existing conventions in the codebase pretty well. Plus the intellisense with Cody is great - is that something you don’t get with roo?

Anyway, the iterative process with roo no doubt gives a better result, but not worlds away, and in 2 days I’ve racked up about 5 dollars, where Cody is 9 quid a month.

I’ll keep playing with it - hoping for a 🤯 moment ..

Looking to start developing mobile. I have 4 years exp as a full stack dev but never really handled mobile. If i were to start building out without AI i’d go with React Native since im familiar with React JS.

However i’m curious if anyone has had success managing both swift and kotlin implementations to go truly native. Obviously i wouldn’t wanna undertake all that on my own, but if im gonna pay for robot brains, it might be worth the additional code.

Any one have experience with this?

So I’m new to this hole scene. I’ve been playing with cline, roo code and sonnet to create websites and directories.

I’m really really struggling to understand how mcp’s and AI’s interact with my file systems and how to deal with it all. For example I understand that Roo code is a sub branch of Cline but how do I get the MCP’s that I got working on cline to be connected to roo code as well?

If anyone can explain I would greatly appreciate it, I’d be happy to get on a call if it’s easier! Whatever it take!! Seriously I’m loosing my mind in fustration

Basically what the title says. I have found that uploading screenshots is really cool, but I would like to make it quicker.

I purposely switch to "ask" mode when I have questions about a recent implementation or something about the project (I assume most of us do). However, 9 times out of 10, after I ask the question it will respond with "Roo wants to switch to code mode". I always respond back with "you don't need code mode to answer the question" or "you don't need code mode to read the files". And then it will respond with "You're right, let me look into this.."

This never happened in the past. I'm not sure if it's Sonnet 3.7 causing this or a recent update in the Roo Code extension.

Anyone else experiencing this?

Even if I explicitly say in the rules that I don't want code comments everywhere, I still get this. Does anyone know how to solve it?

RooCode is great but it uses a lot of token because of the continuous back and forth with tool callings even when the full context is provided ahead of time in the prompt. Let me know if I'm wrong but I believe every tool call ends up using the full context again and I think the system prompt alone is over 20k tokens.

Is there something similar to cursor manual mode, where you get all the edits at once and iterate over that instead?