Cline vs Windsurf: the Enterprise-Engineer’s Field Guide

Two very different spirits inhabit today’s AI-first dev landscape. One is a minimalist extension that slots into the IDE you already love; the other is a purpose-built cockpit where agents run the whole flight. Which one you pick will shape everything from threat-models to build-times.

1. Deployment Footprint: Where Does the Code Actually Live?

• Cline ships as a TypeScript extension for VS Code, JetBrains, Cursor and other IDE forks. You clone the repo, point it at an LLM endpoint you control (AWS Bedrock, Azure OpenAI, local Ollama, etc.), and nothing leaves your network unless you say so.

• Windsurf is a full desktop IDE (a beefed-up Electron fork of VS Code). You can run it entirely on-prem or in hybrid mode, but the thick client is mandatory on every laptop; plug-ins for vanilla VS Code exist, yet they lose the deep agentry that makes Windsurf special.

2. Security & Data-Governance Knobs

• Cline defaults to zero telemetry: repo data stays local, model calls flow through whatever proxy you configure, and every file diff requires an explicit “approve” click in its Plan → Act loop.
• Windsurf offers both SaaS and Docker-based self-host, but its Cascade agent can auto-execute fixes (“Turbo Mode”) unless you dial it back. Enterprises love the on-prem SKU, yet it still depends on a persistent background indexer that touches every file.

3. Depth of Code Intelligence

• Cline’s Model Context Protocol (MCP) ingests your repository snapshot on demand. It’s nimble—great for targeted refactors or failing tests—but it won’t pre-compute a knowledge graph until you ask.
• Windsurf’s Cascade keeps a real-time graph in RAM; the moment you rename a symbol or change a schema, the agent can reason about ripple effects ten steps ahead. The trade-off is a heftier RAM/disk footprint and a longer initial indexing pass.

4. Automation Style: Clutch vs Autopilot

• Cline feels like a stick-shift roadster: you outline the plan, review the diff, and let it act—one shot at a time. Power users script custom sub-agents in plain TypeScript; ops teams love that terminal commands never run without a green-light.
• Windsurf behaves more like a modern EV with adaptive cruise control. Hit “Tab”, and the IDE chains a cascade of steps—importing deps, generating tests, even wiring preview deployments. You can force a pit-stop, but the default is “flow state until something fails.”

5. Extensibility Hooks

• Cline is Apache-2.0 and lives on GitHub—fork it, add tools, or swap the planner model entirely. Many enterprises bolt on bespoke CLI utilities (e.g., proprietary static analysis) straight into the agent toolbox.
• Windsurf exposes rule files and an MCP-compatible server for integrating external data (feature flags, design tokens, etc.), yet the core binary is closed source. You write YAML, not TypeScript, to teach it new tricks.

6. DevOps & CI/CD Alignment

• Cline can already run your shell scripts and docker compose up, so grafting it into an existing Jenkins or GitHub Actions pipeline is mostly a matter of passing environment vars.
• Windsurf ships with built-in preview deployments and live logs inside the IDE; the flipside is that you’ll duplicate some pipeline logic unless your org is standardized on its widgets.

7. Performance Economics

• Cline consumes whatever your chosen model back-end costs; idle time is truly idle, because no background AI is analysing keystrokes.
• Windsurf burns more tokens (constant in-context awareness) and more local CPU, but rewards you with near-instant suggestions on massive monorepos.

Sidebar: UI Bakery is When the Deliverable is an App, not a Repo

If your stakeholders care less about raw code and more about shipping an internal dashboard tonight, UI Bakery is worth a look. It’s a low-code platform where you drag components, wire data sources (SQL, REST, GraphQL, 30+ natives), and even call an integrated LLM to scaffold the front-end or write business logic.

Enterprises can self-host in Docker for compliance, pipe builds through Git, and deploy with one click—handy when you need a secure admin panel faster than any IDE agent can refactor your React tree.

TLDR for the Enterprise Choice:

• Pick Cline when auditability, self-hosting and granular human control outrank fluid UX.
• Choose Windsurf when an all-in agentic cockpit (and the hardware to match) will save more engineering hours than it costs in infrastructure.
• Consider UI Bakery when your business problem is a CRUD dashboard, not a codebase, and you’d rather snap together widgets than maintain React folders.

Whichever path you choose, run a proof-of-concept on a real production repo or dataset-latency, token burn, and compliance quirks always show up in the first week of live traffic.