Tongyi Lingma - Free Coding AI That Doesn't Completely Suck

Tongyi Lingma is Alibaba's free AI coding assistant that launched in 2024. It's basically their answer to GitHub Copilot.

The main thing that sets it apart is the price - it's actually free for personal use, unlike most competitors that charge $10-20/month. That alone makes it worth trying when you're cheap like me.

What it actually does

• Code completion (works better than expected for a free tool)
• Chat about your code (surprisingly good at explaining regex hell)
• Multi-file editing (dies randomly but saves time when it works)
• Agent mode that supposedly writes entire features

The catch: Your code goes to Alibaba's servers. If you're paranoid about that, stick with local tools or pay for enterprise deployment.

Setup reality check

Works with VS Code and JetBrains. Installation takes 20 minutes because their OAuth keeps timing out. Restarted VS Code three times before it worked. Once it's running, it's fine.

Technical specs (supposedly)

Supposedly powered by some huge Qwen model. Alibaba claims big parameter counts but who knows if those numbers are real. In practice, it understands code context better than I expected for a free tool.

Version-specific pain

VS Code 1.85+ breaks the plugin randomly. If you're having issues, downgrade to 1.84 until they fix their shit. JetBrains 2024.1 works fine, newer versions are hit or miss.

Three tiers to know about

• Personal: Free, includes the good stuff
• Enterprise Standard: Team features you probably don't need
• Enterprise Dedicated: For companies that don't trust the cloud

The agent mode sounds cool until you try it. Asked it to build a contact form, got 200 lines of over-engineered bullshit with validation I didn't need. Works fine for basic CRUD though.

Actually useful links

• Installation Guide - When OAuth inevitably fails during setup
• GitHub OAuth timeout fix - For when login breaks after 30 seconds
• VS Code extension crash debugging - When the plugin randomly dies
• Official support - Good luck getting a response

Now that you know what Tongyi Lingma claims to be, let's talk about what it actually does when you're trying to ship code.

Agent Mode - Marketing vs Reality:

You describe what you want and it tries to build it. Agent mode works about 60% of the time. Built me a basic API once, but the auth was broken and the error handling was nonexistent.

Tried it on a login form. Generated decent React code but the validation was overkill and the tests were garbage. Still faster than writing it myself, but barely. When I asked it to refactor some legacy state management, it generated 300 lines of hooks hell that took longer to untangle than rewriting from scratch.

Multi-File Editing:

This is the one feature that actually works consistently. Can rename functions across 15 files without breaking imports. When it works, it's magical. When it doesn't, it corrupts your imports and you spend an hour fixing TypeScript errors.

Saved me from a massive refactor last week - renamed a core utility function and it updated 23 files correctly. But then it missed two test files and my CI failed for 30 minutes.

Code Completion:

Autocomplete is hit or miss. Great for basic React hooks, useless for anything that isn't in a million tutorials online. Suggests deprecated APIs more often than I'd like.

The suggestions are fine for common patterns but it shits the bed with domain-specific code. If you're using GraphQL with custom scalars or working with a homebrew ORM, forget about it.

Memory issues:

Eats RAM like crazy. Running it with Chrome and Docker will max out 16GB easy. Had to force-quit VS Code last week when it hit 8GB usage just from having the extension enabled. Close some tabs or watch your machine crawl to a halt.

Chat Interface:

Better than Stack Overflow for "what does this regex do?" but worse than a senior dev who knows your codebase. Good for explaining legacy code with zero documentation.

Asked it to debug an async race condition once. Gave me a 500-word explanation about event loops but missed the actual bug - a missing await in a forEach loop.

Real production issues I've actually hit:

• Extension dies randomly with zero error messages - happened 3 times last Tuesday alone
• Auth tokens expire without warning, stops working silently - spent 45 minutes debugging why completion stopped before realizing
• Sometimes suggests code that compiles but fails at runtime - generated a forEach loop that should've been a for...of, broke pagination
• Terrible with anything newer than ES2020 - suggested var instead of const in a React 18 project
• Can't handle TypeScript strict mode properly - every suggestion violates strictNullChecks

Enterprise stuff:

Big companies get team management and knowledge base features. The knowledge base is actually useful - learns your coding patterns instead of suggesting generic Stack Overflow examples. Costs money though.

When shit inevitably breaks:

• VS Code memory fix - For when it eats all your RAM
• TypeScript strict mode fixes - Because it suggests garbage null checks
• Extension crash debugging - When you need to find which plugin is dying