Continue, Cline Stall on 16GB VRAM

The hot take: local agentic coding is finally usable, but 16GB VRAM still forces compromises that cloud copilots hide from you.

• –Continue’s docs show the right direction for offline work: agent mode, local configs, context selection, MCP, and documented Ollama support, so the editor stack itself is not the main blocker.
• –Cline’s own local-model guidance is blunt: smaller 7B-20B models often fail at tool use and multi-step coding, while its recommended local setup starts around Qwen3 Coder 30B and much more RAM.
• –The real limit here is not just raw model size; it is reliable tool calling plus enough context to survive large-file refactors without constant manual babysitting.
• –For 16GB VRAM, the practical ceiling is usually smaller local models, shorter context, and more careful file selection, which makes the experience feel less “agentic” than Copilot.
• –This is a strong signal that offline coding assistants still need better context engineering, not just better quantization.