Lingma glossary
Explains names. Does not teach clicks. Tutorial: lingma. Map: index.
TONGYI Lingma / Qoder CN
What it is: Alibaba Cloud's coding assistant. Marketing: code generation, ask, multi-file edits, coding agent. Help Center: the coding-focused sub-product of the Qoder CN series (formerly "TONGYI Lingma").
Why the rename: official date 2026-05-20. The suite now also covers office, terminal, digital-employee, and hosted-agent products. The public-cloud coding desktop app is now Qoder CN IDE; the JetBrains plugin continues.
Role: maps to Copilot / Cursor (work inside an editor), not to a consumer chat site.
Official: What is Qoder CN, What is the Qoder CN series.
Qoder CN IDE / Lingma IDE
What it is: a standalone desktop IDE with the assistant built in. No plugin install. Marketing download pages still say Lingma IDE; Help Center and the new brand site say Qoder CN IDE.
Why it exists: official iteration is concentrated here (and on the JetBrains plugin). When the VS Code plugin slows or stops, this is the official replacement.
Versus the plugin: the plugin lives inside your current editor. The IDE is another client. Billing documents the upgrade as: uninstall Lingma IDE, install Qoder CN IDE.
IDE plugins
What they are: extensions for JetBrains IDEs, Visual Studio Code, and Visual Studio. Marketplace / package IDs still say TONGYI Lingma / tongyi-lingma.
What they are not: not Qoder CN CLI, not QoderWork.
VS Code: Help Center still teaches install and says updates will slow; billing says evolution stopped; docs.qoder.cn says unmaintained; the EN update log says discontinued. Treat it as installable, not as the current primary surface.
Ask / Edit / Agent
Three modes in one chat, not three products.
| Mode | What | Why it exists |
|---|---|---|
| Ask | Answers only | Understand first |
| Edit | Multi-file edits in your range; faster | You already know the files |
| Agent | Plans, tools, terminal | You only give the goal |
You can switch inside one thread. Edit is missing on Lingma IDE / JetBrains. Visual Studio is Ask-only for now. How-to: cookbook.
NES (Next Edit Suggestion)
What it is: predict the next edit, not the next line, from full-file context, recent edits, and the caret.
What it is not: ordinary inline completion. IDE changelogs later call the upgrade NEXT.
Official: NES.
Project awareness / memory
Project awareness: infer framework, stack, relevant files, and errors from the task so you do not paste the whole repo.
Memory: accumulate personal / project / issue memory during chat (Memory).
These explain why opening related files helps. They do not mean "the model was trained on your private repo". Model internals are out of scope; see Learn LLM.
Quest / RepoWiki / Subagent / Experts
Listed on What is Qoder CN as IDE-side upgrades:
- Quest 2.0: split a complex coding task into steps.
- RepoWiki: project-level wiki.
- Subagent: child agents.
- Experts: specialist agents for frontend, backend, database, ops, test.
Official: RepoWiki, Quest, and Subagent deduct Credits and are not turn-capped. This handbook does not split them into their own tutorials; operations live on docs.qoder.cn.
Credits
What it is: the usage unit introduced with seats on 2026-05-20. Extra Credits are sold as add-on packs. After the full-suite account upgrade, individual Credits can be shared across IDE / JetBrains / QoderWork / CLI and other suite apps.
What it is not: unlimited free usage. The trial plan is explicitly limited, including a 2-week trial. Numbers: Billing.
Not this
| Name | Actually | This site |
|---|---|---|
| Tongyi Qianwen / Qwen | Consumer assistant (qianwen.com) | One map row, #83 |
| Model Studio (Bailian) | Model / agent platform | One map row, #85 |
| Qoder CN CLI | Terminal product | One map row |
| QoderWork CN | Office desktop agent | One map row |
| QoderWake CN | Digital employee | One map row |
| Cloud Agents | Hosted agent platform | One map row |
| Taobao / ECS / payments | Non-AI products | Out of scope |
| "Lingma is just Qwen's IDE skin" | False | Two products |
| "It is only a VS Code plugin" | False | Official default is IDE + JetBrains |
Renamed or retired
| Old wording | Now |
|---|---|
| AI Coding Assistant TONGYI Lingma | Qoder CN series from 2026-05-20 |
| Lingma IDE | Qoder CN IDE; uninstall then reinstall on the official path |
| TONGYI Lingma plugin display name | Help Center: Qoder CN; marketplace ID still Alibaba-Cloud.tongyi-lingma |
| Individual Pro limited-time free | Ended 2026-05-20 18:00; promo users moved to the community / trial tier |
Which door to open: learning map.