Windsurf’s Cascade brings the best of agentic coding to the JetBrains suite. To open Cascade, press Cmd/Ctrl+L or click the Cascade icon.

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Model selection

Select your desired model from the selection menu below the Cascade conversation input box. Click below too see the full breakdown of the available models and their availability across different plans and pricing.

Models

Model availability in Windsurf.

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Write/Chat Modes

Cascade comes in two modes: Write and Chat. Write mode allows Cascade to create and make modifications to your codebase, while Chat mode is optimized for questions around your codebase or general coding principles.

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Access to Tools

Cascade has a variety of tools at its disposal, such as Search, Analyze, Web Search, and the terminal. It can detect which packages and tools that you’re using, which ones need to be installed, and even install them for you. Just ask Cascade how to run your project and press Accept.
Cascade can make up to 25 tool calls per prompt. If the trajectory stops, simply type in continue and Cascade will resume from where it left off. Each continue will count as a new prompt.

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Voice input

Use Voice input to use your voice to interact with Cascade. In its current form it can transcribe your speech to text.

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Revert to previous steps

You have the ability to revert changes that Cascade has made if you want to. Simply hover your mouse over the original prompt and click on the revert arrow on the right, or revert directly from the table of contents. This will revert all code changes back to the state of your codebase at the desired step.
Reverts are currently irreversible, so be careful!

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Turbo Mode

In Turbo mode, Cascade will always execute the command, unless it is in the deny list. You can toggle this via the Windsurf - Settings panel in the bottom right hand corner of the editor.

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Real-time collaboration

A unique capability of Cascade is that it is aware of your real-time actions. You no longer necessarily need to prompt with context on your prior actions, as Cascade is already aware. Try making a manual change in the code editor, and then prompt Cascade to “continue my work”!

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Ignoring files

If you’d like Cascade to ignore files, you can add your files to .codeiumignore at the root of your workspace. This will prevent Cascade from viewing, editing or creating files inside of the paths designated. You can declare the file paths in a format similar to .gitignore.

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Global .codeiumignore

For enterprise customers managing multiple repositories, you can enforce ignore rules across all repositories by placing a global .codeiumignore file in the ~/.codeium/ folder. This global configuration will apply to all Windsurf workspaces on your system and works in addition to any repository-specific .codeiumignore files.