⚡ Kilo Code Setup — Every Surface

VS Code (and VS Code-compatible editors)

1. Extensions (Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+X) → search Kilo Code.
2. Click the arrow next to Install and choose Install Pre-Release Version. Kilo says the "pre-release" channel is the current, stable extension built on the Kilo CLI.
3. VSCodium, Windsurf, Gitpod and Theia: install from Open VSX. You can also install a .vsix from GitHub releases, which is also how to roll back to an older version.

Requires VS Code 1.84.0 or later. On Windows, PowerShell must be on your PATH.

JetBrains

Install the Kilo Code plugin from the JetBrains Marketplace, then open Settings → Tools → Kilo Code. It uses the same kilo.jsonc as the CLI and VS Code, and adds a Chat view plus an Agents view for parallel tasks in isolated git worktrees.

The kilo CLI

npm install -g @kilocode/cli
cd your-project
kilo                  # start the terminal UI
kilo --version
kilo upgrade          # update (or: npm update -g @kilocode/cli)

Inside the TUI, /connect adds provider credentials and /models switches models. The CLI is a fork of OpenCode and supports the same configuration options.

Sign in, or bring your own key

The quickest start is a free Kilo account (email, Google, Apple, GitHub, GitLab or Discord). It routes models through the Kilo Gateway at provider rates, with no markup. In the CLI:

kilo auth login
kilo auth list

Or use your own provider. Kilo supports 30+, including OpenRouter, Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, DeepSeek, Mistral, Bedrock, Vertex and Ollama. You can also sign in with a ChatGPT Plus/Pro or SuperGrok subscription instead of an API key. Set keys in Settings → Providers, or as environment variables for the CLI (export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=…). Subscription logins cover the IDE and CLI but not cloud features. See models & pricing.

Configuration: kilo.jsonc

{
  "$schema": "https://app.kilo.ai/config.json",
  "model": "anthropic/<model-id>",
  "provider": { "anthropic": { "options": { "apiKey": "{env:ANTHROPIC_API_KEY}" } } },
  "permission": { "*": "ask", "bash": { "*": "ask", "git *": "allow" } }
}

Project settings override global ones. Refer to secrets with {env:VAR} rather than pasting keys into the file. Permissions and the sandbox are covered in security.

Mobile, Slack and cloud agents

• Mobile (iOS and Android): view and steer sessions running in your CLI or editor, start cloud agents, and review GitHub, GitLab and Bitbucket pull requests.
• Slack: mention @Kilo in a thread. It reads the conversation and your connected repositories, answers, or starts a cloud agent that opens a pull request.
• Cloud Agents: run Kilo in the cloud against a connected GitHub, GitLab or Bitbucket repository. Compute is billed per second from $0.60/hour, on top of model usage.

Coming from Claude Code or Codex? Start an empty session and run /resume-claude or /resume-codex to import a recent session. Kilo reads AGENTS.md as-is.