Skip to content
NewsProduct launch

Cline swaps its default model from Claude Sonnet 5.5 to Google's Gemini 4 Argon

· by Pondero Newsdesk

The short version

Cline's v4.1.25 release on October 16, 2026 changed the model an unpinned install reaches for first and added Cloud sessions, which run a task in a hosted sandbox that keeps working after the editor closes.

Cline swaps its default model from Claude Sonnet 5.5 to Google's Gemini 4 Argon

Cline shipped v4.1.25 on October 16, 2026, and anyone who has never pinned a model in Settings is now routed somewhere new: Google's Gemini 4 Argon replaces Claude Sonnet 5.5 as the model Cline reaches for first, per the release notes. The same release lets a task run in a hosted sandbox that keeps going after the editor closes.

What shipped

Per the release notes, the change is scoped: "With no model chosen, the Cline provider now uses Gemini 4 Argon, the new first model in Cline's recommended list. OpenRouter stays on Claude Sonnet 5.5." So the swap hits users on Cline's own provider path specifically, not every unpinned setup. The broader catalog refresh touches more than a dozen other providers. The recommended list adds Gemini 4 Argon and drops Grok 4.7; the free list replaces Step 5 Preview with Nemotron 3.5 Super VL; and default models changed for GitHub Copilot, Google Vertex AI, Fireworks AI, CoreWeave, DigitalOcean, and several smaller providers, each moving to a different named model per the notes.

The release also adds Cline Cloud sessions, described as rolling out gradually: a task runs in a hosted sandbox on a GitHub repo and branch the user picks, shows up in Recent and History with live status, sends a notification when it finishes, and keeps running after the editor window closes. Two fixes round out the release: long requests to local models like LM Studio and Ollama no longer fail after five minutes of silence with a BodyTimeoutError while the server is still processing a large prompt, and a provider error that interrupts a response mid-stream now triggers up to three automatic retries before the turn fails.

An unpinned install now runs and bills differently than last week

For developers who never set a model explicitly, output quality, latency, and per-token cost on Cline's own provider path just changed without any action on their end. Cline has moved unpinned defaults before. Its own release history shows some third-party provider defaults shifting more than once within days of each other. The durable fix is the same one Cline's documentation already recommends: pin a model in Settings so a vendor-side default swap cannot silently change what an agent produces or what it costs to run. Cloud sessions add a second variable worth tracking separately, since running a task in a hosted sandbox instead of locally shifts where compute happens, and the release notes do not disclose session pricing or quota.

Readers who want to try the new Cloud sessions can grab Cline directly. Pondero's Cline review covers current pricing and the desktop feature set in more detail.

What to watch next

Watch whether Cline discloses Cloud sessions pricing as usage-based or folds it into existing plans, and whether the Gemini 4 Argon default holds past this release or gets revised again, since Cline's provider defaults have already shifted within the same release cycle on past occasions.

Sources