I’m on a Cruise Ship Writing Code, and Cline’s Side Panel is the tool that Keeps Me Sane

Pollyg

2 min read

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Oct 14, 2026

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Most people on a cruise are relaxing by the pool, eating from a buffet that never closes, and making questionable decisions at the midnight dessert station. I brought my laptop and opened VS Code. I have one screen, no monitor, and a cabin desk roughly the size of a cutting board.

At home, I work like a king. Code on one monitor, AI chat and google on the other, perhaps youtube open sometimes as well.

On one laptop, every time I wanted to ask google or ChatGPT about something, I had to switch back and forth, look through the internet, and look back at my code. Sometimes I forget the answer immediately, because the ship just tilted and so did my short-term memory.

I started to use Cline as a VS Code as an extension. It doesn’t need its own window. It just sits in a panel on the right side of the editor, where I can ask questions, ask Cline to modify my code, add comments, and run commands, ALL in a single window.

It also collapses when I need the full width for code, which on a tiny screen is the closest thing to a second monitor I’ll get this week.

Here’s the part I think is the coolest: Cline isn’t tied to one AI model. You pick whichever model you prefer and plug it in. If a better model comes out next month, or I want a cheaper one for simple tasks and a stronger one for the hard stuff, I change a setting instead of changing my whole workflow.

You don’t need to be at sea to like a side-panel AI. It’s great if you:

• Work on a laptop with no second monitor
• Lose your train of thought every time you switch windows
• Want an AI that works on your real project instead of pasted snippets
• Are learning as you go and want explanations right next to your code
• Have made some questionable travel-and-work decisions of your own

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Is coding on a cruise ship a good idea? Absolutely not. Is Cline in a side panel a great way to do it? Yes, and that’s the only review I’m qualified to give.