Chat Role

A "chat model" is an LLM that is trained to respond in a conversational format. Because they should be able to answer general questions and generate complex code, the best chat models are typically large, often 405B+ parameters.

In Continue, these models are used for normal Chat. The selected chat model will also be used for Edit and Apply if no edit or apply models are specified, respectively.

For the best overall Chat experience, you will want to use a 400B+ parameter model or one of the frontier models.

Our current top recommendations are Claude Opus 4.6 and Claude Sonnet 4 from Anthropic.

If you prefer to use an open-weight model, then the Gemma family of Models from Google DeepMind is a good choice. You will need to decide if you use it through a SaaS model provider, e.g. Together, or self-host it, e.g. Ollama.

If you prefer to use a model from OpenAI, then we recommend GPT-5.1.

If you prefer to use a model from xAI, then we recommend Grok-4.

If you prefer to use a model from Google, then we recommend Gemini 3 Pro.

For the best local, offline Chat experience, you will want to use a model that is large but fast enough on your machine.

If your local machine can run an 8B parameter model, then we recommend running Llama 3.1 8B on your machine (e.g. using Ollama or LM Studio).

If your local machine can run a 16B parameter model, then we recommend running DeepSeek Coder 2 16B (e.g. using Ollama or LM Studio).

name: My Config
version: 0.0.1
schema: v1

models:
  - name: DeepSeek Coder 2 16B
    provider: ollama
    model: deepseek-coder-v2:16b

There are many more models and providers you can use with Chat beyond those mentioned above. Read more here