Show HN: Modo – I built an open-source alternative to Kiro, Cursor, and Windsurf
The open-source AI IDE that plans before it codes.
MIT License · Quick Start · What Modo Adds · Contributing
I wanted a small feature in an AI coding tool. Couldn't find a way to suggest it. So I asked myself: how hard is it to actually build something like Kiro, Cursor, or Windsurf?
Turns out — not as hard as you'd think. Starting from the Void editor (itself a fork of VS Code), I got to roughly 60–70% of what those tools offer in a short stretch of building. It was genuinely fun.
This is Modo. A standalone desktop IDE where prompts become structured plans before they become code. Open source, MIT licensed, yours to hack on.
Everything below was built on top of Void's existing AI chat, inline edit (Cmd+K), autocomplete, multi-provider LLM support, tool use, and MCP integration. Here's what's new: