How to Configure Model Capabilities in Continue

Understanding and configuring model capabilities for tools and image support

Continue needs to know what features your models support to provide the best experience. This guide explains how model capabilities work and how to configure them.

What Are Model Capabilities?

Model capabilities tell Continue what features a model supports:

• tool_use - Whether the model can use tools and functions
• image_input - Whether the model can process images

Without proper capability configuration, you may encounter issues like:

• Agent mode being unavailable (requires tools)
• Tools not working at all
• Image uploads being disabled

How Continue Detects Model Capabilities

Continue uses a two-tier system for determining model capabilities:

How Automatic Detection Works (Default)

Continue automatically detects capabilities based on your provider and model name. For example:

• OpenAI: GPT-4 and GPT-3.5 Turbo models support tools
• Anthropic: Claude 3.5+ models support both tools and images
• Ollama: Most models support tools, vision models support images
• Google: All Gemini models support function calling

This works well for popular models, but may not cover custom deployments or newer models.

For implementation details, see:

• toolSupport.ts - Tool capability detection logic
• @continuedev/llm-info - Image support detection

How to Configure Capabilities Manually

You can add capabilities to models that Continue doesn’t automatically detect in your config.yaml.

You cannot override autodetection - you can only add capabilities. Continue will always use its built-in knowledge about your model in addition to any capabilities you specify.

models:
  - name: my-custom-gpt4
    provider: openai
    apiBase: https://my-deployment.com/v1
    model: gpt-4-custom
    capabilities:
      - tool_use
      - image_input

When to Add Capabilities Manually

Add capabilities when:

1. Using custom deployments - Your API endpoint serves a model with different capabilities than the standard version
2. Using newer models - Continue doesn’t yet recognize a newly released model
3. Experiencing issues - Autodetection isn’t working correctly for your setup
4. Using proxy services - Some proxy services modify model capabilities

How to Configure Model Capabilities (Examples)

How to Add Basic Tool Support

Add tool support for a model that Continue doesn’t recognize:

models:
  - name: custom-model
    provider: openai
    model: my-fine-tuned-gpt4
    capabilities:
      - tool_use

The tool_use capability is for native tool/function calling support. The model must actually support tools for this to work.

Experimental: System message tools are available as an experimental feature for models without native tool support. These are not automatically used as a fallback and must be explicitly configured. Most models are trained for native tools, so system message tools may not work as well.

How to Handle Models with Limited Capabilities

Explicitly set no capabilities (autodetection will still apply):

models:
  - name: limited-claude
    provider: anthropic
    model: claude-4.0-sonnet
    capabilities: [] # Empty array doesn't disable autodetection

An empty capabilities array does not disable autodetection. Continue will still detect and use the model’s actual capabilities. To truly limit a model’s capabilities, you would need to use a model that doesn’t support those features.

How to Enable Multiple Capabilities

Enable both tools and image support:

models:
  - name: multimodal-gpt
    provider: openai
    model: gpt-4-vision-preview
    capabilities:
      - tool_use
      - image_input

Common Configuration Scenarios

Some providers and custom deployments may require explicit capability configuration:

• OpenRouter: May not preserve the original model’s capabilities
• Custom API endpoints: May have different capabilities than standard models
• Local models: May need explicit capabilities if using non-standard model names

Example configuration:

models:
  - name: custom-deployment
    provider: openai
    apiBase: https://custom-api.company.com/v1
    model: custom-gpt
    capabilities:
      - tool_use # If supports function calling
      - image_input # If supports vision

How to Troubleshoot Capability Issues

For troubleshooting capability-related issues like Agent mode being unavailable or tools not working, see the Troubleshooting guide.

Best Practices for Model Capabilities

1. Start with autodetection - Only override if you experience issues
2. Test after changes - Verify tools and images work as expected
3. Keep Continue updated - Newer versions improve autodetection

Remember: Setting capabilities only adds to autodetection. Continue will still use its built-in knowledge about your model in addition to your specified capabilities.

Model Capability Support

This matrix shows which models support tool use and image input capabilities. Continue auto-detects these capabilities, but you can override them if needed.

OpenAI

Model	Tool Use	Image Input	Context Window
GPT-5.1	Yes	No	400k
GPT-5	Yes	No	400k
o3	Yes	No	128k
o3-mini	Yes	No	128k
GPT-4o	Yes	Yes	128k
GPT-4 Turbo	Yes	Yes	128k
GPT-4	Yes	No	8k
GPT-3.5 Turbo	Yes	No	16k

Anthropic

Model	Tool Use	Image Input	Context Window
Claude 4 Sonnet	Yes	Yes	200k
Claude 3.5 Sonnet	Yes	Yes	200k
Claude 3.5 Haiku	Yes	Yes	200k

Cohere

Model	Tool Use	Image Input	Context Window
Command A	Yes	No	256k
Command A Reasoning	Yes	No	256k
Command A Translate	Yes	No	8k
Command A Vision	No	Yes	128k

Google

Model	Tool Use	Image Input	Context Window
Gemini 2.5 Pro	Yes	Yes	2M
Gemini 2.5 Flash	Yes	Yes	1M

Mistral

Model	Tool Use	Image Input	Context Window
Devstral Medium	Yes	No	32k
Mistral	Yes	No	32k

DeepSeek

Model	Tool Use	Image Input	Context Window
DeepSeek V3	Yes	No	128k
DeepSeek Coder V2	Yes	No	128k
DeepSeek Chat	Yes	No	64k

xAI

Model	Tool Use	Image Input	Context Window
Grok Code Fast 1	Yes	Yes	256k
Grok 4 Fast Reasoning	Yes	Yes	2M
Grok 4 Fast Non-Reasoning	Yes	Yes	2M
Grok 4	Yes	Yes	256k
Grok 3	Yes	Yes	131k
Grok 3 Mini	Yes	Yes	131k

Moonshot AI

Model	Tool Use	Image Input	Context Window
Kimi K2	Yes	Yes	128k

Qwen

Model	Tool Use	Image Input	Context Window
Qwen Coder 3 480B	Yes	No	128k

Ollama (Local Models)

Model	Tool Use	Image Input	Context Window
Qwen 3 Coder	Yes	No	32k
Qwen 2.5 VL	No	Yes	128k
Devstral Small	Yes	No	32k
Llama 3.1	Yes	No	128k
Llama 3	Yes	No	8k
Mistral	Yes	No	32k
Codestral	Yes	No	32k
Gemma 3 4B	Yes	Yes	128k

Notes

• Tool Use: Function calling support (tools are required for Agent mode)
• Image Input: Processing images
• Context Window: Maximum number of tokens the model can process in a single request

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