Cline v4.1.21 Fixes Local Model Timeouts, Expands Catalog to 6,386 Models Across 209 Providers

What shipped

Cline, the open-source AI coding agent for VS Code, released version 4.1.21 on September 24. The update focuses on provider catalog maintenance, a security patch, and several reliability fixes for local model workflows.

New provider and catalog refresh

The release adds support for ai&, an OpenAI-compatible endpoint serving open-weight models from Japan. Cline's model catalog now lists 6,386 models across 209 providers, according to the release notes.

As part of this refresh, the resolved default model changes for 19 providers that don't pin a specific model version. Eleven of those, including GitHub Copilot and Vertex, now default to Claude Opus 5.5. Developers relying on unpinned defaults through these providers will see a different model behind their requests after upgrading.

Security fix

Cline raised its minimum js-yaml dependency to version 4.3.2, addressing a security fix in the parser used to read rule and skill frontmatter files.

Local model reliability fixes

The most substantive fix targets local model backends: llama.cpp, Ollama, and LM Studio. These servers cap generation length based on whatever context space remains, independent of the output-token budget a user sets. Previously, long replies that hit this limit would end the task outright. Now, Cline compacts the conversation and retries once; if compaction doesn't resolve the issue, the existing concise-retry recovery mechanism still runs, and any partial answer generated is preserved rather than discarded.

Other fixes

• Reopening a task that previously failed now correctly displays the error with a retry option, rather than presenting the failed task as completed.
• Commands that produce no output no longer display a raw JSON artifact (e.g., [{"query":"git add -A","result":"","success":true}]) in place of actual output.
• On Windows, @-mention file search now returns correct filenames; nested files (such as a subfolder's README) previously rendered as /README.md, and duplicate entries for the same open file have been eliminated.
• Canceling a request while it's waiting to retry after an empty model response now takes effect immediately instead of waiting for the backoff period to finish.

The full changelog is available on GitHub comparing v4.1.20 to v4.1.21.

What this means

This is a maintenance release, not a new model or major feature launch. The most consequential item for teams running Cline in production is the default-model shift to Claude Opus 5.5 for 11 unpinned providers — anyone who hasn't explicitly pinned a model version through GitHub Copilot, Vertex, or the other affected providers will see behavior and cost changes without any local configuration change on their end. The local-model output-limit fix addresses a real pain point for developers running llama.cpp, Ollama, or LM Studio, where previously a single long response could silently kill an entire task instead of recovering gracefully. Together, these changes signal Cline's continued focus on multi-provider stability rather than expanding its own model or feature surface.