Roo Code Is Shutting Down Its VS Code Extension on May 15, Pivoting to Roomote

Roo Code, the open-source AI coding extension for VS Code, is shutting down on May 15, 2026. The team is ending the VS Code extension, Roo Cloud, and the Roo Router on that date, and moving entirely to a new cloud-based product called Roomote.

The announcement positions this as a deliberate bet: the team believes IDE-based coding tools are a transitional phase, and that autonomous agents working outside the editor are where things are heading. Whether you agree with that framing or not, the practical reality is that a widely-used open-source extension is going away next month.

What Roomote Is

Roomote is a cloud agent that handles coding tasks end-to-end through Slack, GitHub, and Linear instead of living in your editor. You give it a task, it runs the code, verifies results, generates a pull request, and hands it back to you for review. The pricing is $20 per month plus $5 per agent-hour.

That’s a meaningful jump from free and open-source. Roo Code has always been BYOK (bring your own key), so the real cost was just your API usage. Roomote adds a platform fee on top of that.

What Happens After May 15

The Roo Code repo is being archived, not deleted. The team is not pushing a kill switch to installed extensions. Whatever version you have running will keep working as long as your model API endpoint accepts requests. You just won’t get new features or bug fixes.

For migration, the Roo team officially recommends Cline as the closest open-source replacement for the VS Code workflow, and Kilo Code as the most compatible drop-in. Kilo Code actively courted the Roo migration, and the team published a migration guide noting that custom modes carry over with minimal changes.

The Broader Shift

Roo Code isn’t alone in moving away from IDE-first tooling. Devin, OpenAI’s Codex, and Anthropic’s Claude Code all have strong server-side or terminal-first approaches. Cursor and Windsurf remain committed to the editor experience, but the cloud agent model has been gaining ground quickly.

What’s unusual about the Roo situation is the abruptness. Most tools that pivot leave the old product running indefinitely. Setting a hard shutdown date three weeks out is a firm statement that the team is done maintaining the extension, not just deprioritizing it.

If you’re currently using Roo Code, you have until May 15 to plan your move. The Roo to Kilo migration guide is the most detailed option available right now.

Sources: The New Stack, Digital Today, Kilo Blog, Kilo Migration Guide