Continuing Void → Building CortexIDE (open-source Cursor alternative) (opencortexide.com)

CortexIDE is an open-source fork of Void (itself a VS Code fork) positioned as a privacy-first, local-friendly alternative to Cursor and other closed “IDE+LLM” products. It lets you import your VS Code themes, keybinds and settings in one click, and connects directly to any LLM without routing messages through a private backend. You can run self-hosted/open models (DeepSeek, Llama, Gemini, Qwen, etc.) to avoid API credits, or plug straight into frontier providers (Gemini 2.5, Claude 3.7, Grok 3, o4-mini, Qwen 3) when you need cloud performance. Technically, CortexIDE adds developer-focused LLM features: checkpoints for LLM-driven changes, lint error detection, robust tool use, “fast apply” code edits, and support for large files (works on 1,000-line files). It provides Agent Mode (full file create/edit/delete, terminal and MCP tool access) and Gather Mode (read/search-only), and enables agent-style workflows even with open-source models that don’t natively support tool calling. For the AI/ML community this means easier experimentation with self-hosted models in an IDE context, greater privacy and control over data and costs, and a flexible platform for integrating model tooling and agent behavior—at the expense of requiring user-managed compute and configuration for hosting high-end models.