Accelerating Development with Cascade Autocomplete
Learn how to use Windsurf’s Autocomplete to make rapid, credit-free code edits directly in your editor.
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Cascade is brilliant when we have a well-formed ask and a few prompt credits to burn. But some days, you’ve hit your monthly credit ceiling or simply want to stay in keyboard flow without opening the chat pane. That’s where Windsurf Autocomplete—a.k.a. tab suggestions—earns its keep. It’s a lighter-weight AI sidekick: no diff viewer, no chat history, just ghost-text that materialises as you type. We press “Tab,” the code becomes real; press “Esc,” and it evaporates. It is predictive text for programmers, backed by the same context engine that fuels Cascade.
Don’t worry! Inline AI doesn’t hijack your code. These suggestions are entirely ephemeral until you press “Enter” or “Tab.” Until then, they’re just ghost-text. Nothing changes unless you choose to accept it.
We will examine what powers Autocomplete, learn how to steer it with quick keystrokes or inline comments, and walk through a tiny Python calculator that we’ll extend—zero Cascade, all tab-accepts—to prove that you can layer serious functionality without ever leaving insert mode.
How does autocomplete work in Windsurf?
The magic happens due to two things:
First, the Indexing Engine we met earlier is still indexing your repo, so Autocomplete knows every function, every import path, and every recent edit.
Second, a latency-tuned model called SWE-1-mini sits on Windsurf’s servers waiting for a tiny snippet of your current buffer: the code to the left and right of your cursor, the name of the file, the language, even what’s in your clipboard (if ...