Cline CLI v3.0.47 Adds Free Model Support and Makes Agentic Compaction Default

Cline released version 3.0.47 of its command-line interface on July 28, according to the project's GitHub release page. The update, built on Cline SDK v0.0.66, adds end-to-end support for free Cline models and changes the default context-compaction behavior for agentic tasks.

What's new

Free Cline models are now fully supported in the CLI. Models available at no cost display a "(free)" tag, and when a user hits the usage limit for a free model, the CLI renders a dedicated card showing the reset time rather than failing silently.

Settings under /settings general — including plan/act mode, tool auto-approve, and compaction mode — now persist across CLI restarts, removing the need to reconfigure these options each session.

The terminal UI (TUI) stack was upgraded from opentui 0.1.102 to 0.4.3. This upgrade introduced a rendering bug where a grey panel remained on screen after closing dialogs such as the model picker, help menu, or command palette; that regression is fixed in this release.

Agentic compaction is now the default context-compaction strategy, replacing basic compaction as the fallback behavior. The update fixes two issues tied to this strategy: cases where it silently reverted to basic compaction without notice, and tool-heavy transcripts that previously could never locate a valid cut point for trimming context.

Fixes

Several smaller fixes are included:

• A React duplicate-key warning that occurred when the read_files tool listed the same path more than once has been resolved.
• Aborting a task no longer risks terminating the shared hub daemon, a stability fix for multi-task workflows.
• Failures in connector status delivery are no longer fatal to an in-progress turn — the CLI now handles these failures gracefully instead of aborting.
• Editor edits now preserve a file's existing line endings, fixing failed exact-match edits on files using CRLF line endings.

Provider and model catalog updates

Built-in provider coverage has been broadened and is now generated from models.dev, an external model metadata source. The bundled model catalog was also updated as part of the SDK v0.0.66 bump.

The full changelog and diff between v3.0.46 and v3.0.47 are available on Cline's GitHub repository.

What this means

This is an incremental maintenance release rather than a major capability shift, but it addresses real friction points for CLI users: persistent settings reduce repetitive configuration, and the free-model usage indicators make cost boundaries more transparent for users testing Cline without a paid plan. The agentic-compaction fixes matter most for users running long, tool-heavy agent sessions, where context management failures previously could cause silent degradation or stalled tasks. The shift to models.dev for provider generation suggests Cline is standardizing its model catalog maintenance against a shared external registry rather than hand-maintaining provider lists, which should make future model additions faster to ship.