Inline Chat & Completions

Inline chat (Cmd+I)

Press Cmd+I (Mac) or Ctrl+I (Windows/Linux) to open inline chat directly in the editor.

Edit selected code — select code, press Cmd+I, and describe the change (e.g., “convert to async/await”)
Insert at cursor — place your cursor and describe what to generate
Context-aware — SideCar includes the surrounding code for better edits

Inline chat uses the same model as the sidebar chat.

SideCar provides Copilot-like autocomplete as you type. This is opt-in — enable it in settings:

"sidecar.enableInlineCompletions": true

Ollama models: Uses the Fill-in-the-Middle (FIM) endpoint for accurate completions
Anthropic models: Falls back to the Messages API
Completions are debounced (default 300ms) with in-flight cancellation to avoid overloading your machine
Press Tab to accept a suggestion, Escape to dismiss

Setting	Default	Description
`sidecar.enableInlineCompletions`	`false`	Turn on autocomplete
`sidecar.completionModel`	`""`	Use a different model for completions (leave empty for chat model)
`sidecar.completionMaxTokens`	`256`	Max tokens per completion
`sidecar.completionDebounceMs`	`300`	Minimum ms between requests

Use a smaller, faster model for completions (e.g., qwen2.5-coder:7b) while keeping a larger model for chat
Lower completionDebounceMs for faster suggestions (at the cost of more CPU/GPU usage)
Higher completionMaxTokens allows longer suggestions but takes more time

Right-click on selected code to access SideCar code actions:

Explain with SideCar — sends the selection to chat with an “Explain this code” prompt
Fix with SideCar — sends the selection with a “Fix this code” prompt
Refactor with SideCar — sends the selection with a “Refactor this code” prompt

The selected code and the action are sent to the sidebar chat, where the agent can use its full tool set to respond.

Use @ syntax in chat messages to include specific context:

Syntax	Description
`@file:src/index.ts`	Include a specific file’s contents
`@folder:src/utils/`	Include all files in a directory
`@symbol:MyClass`	Include the definition of a symbol

References are resolved before sending the message to the model. Use them when the automatic workspace context doesn’t include what you need.

Attach images to chat messages for vision-capable models:

Useful for: