cli and products

Aider

Aider — AI pair programming in your terminal. Repo-aware, maps your codebase, auto-commits with sensible messages, works with Claude / DeepSeek / OpenAI / local LLMs. Apache-2.0.
by cache.directory updated Sep 10, 2026 CC-BY-4.0
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## what it does

tl;dr

A terminal CLI that lets you talk to an LLM about your existing repo — it reads the tree, edits files, and commits each change as a sensible commit message so every diff is undoable with plain git.

What it does

From github.com/Aider-AI/aider: “Aider lets you pair program with LLMs to start a new project or build on your existing codebase.” It builds a repo map of the whole codebase before editing (docs), which is why it scales to larger projects where context stuffing breaks down.

Headline features from the README:

  • Cloud and local LLMs — Claude 3.7 Sonnet, DeepSeek R1 & Chat V3, OpenAI o1 / o3-mini / GPT-4o, plus any local model endpoint (docs).
  • Git integration — every edit is a real commit with a generated message; git diff / git revert work normally.
  • Use in your IDE — watch mode adds comments to your code in any editor; aider applies the changes (docs).
  • 100+ languages — Python, JS/TS, Rust, Ruby, Go, C++, PHP, HTML/CSS, and more (docs).
  • Images & web pages — paste visual context, screenshots, or reference URLs into the chat.
  • Voice-to-code — speak requests; aider implements them (docs).
  • Linting & testing — auto-run your linters/tests after each change; aider fixes what fails (docs).

Install

From the README:

python -m pip install aider-install
aider-install

cd /to/your/project

# Claude 3.7 Sonnet
aider --model sonnet --api-key anthropic=$ANTHROPIC_API_KEY

# DeepSeek
aider --model deepseek --api-key deepseek=$DEEPSEEK_API_KEY

# OpenAI o3-mini
aider --model o3-mini --api-key openai=$OPENAI_API_KEY

Keys are also read from environment variables directly (ANTHROPIC_API_KEY, OPENAI_API_KEY, DEEPSEEK_API_KEY, etc.) and from a .aider.conf.yml in the project root. Full reference: aider.chat/docs/config.html.

Gotchas

From the fetched README and topics:

  • Apache-2.0 (LICENSE.txt). Use it commercially without license surprises.
  • Costs tokens proportional to the repo map on large codebases — the map is the moat, but watch the meter.
  • CLI, not an editor. Pair it with --watch if you want IDE-driven comments (docs).
  • Singularity badge: ~85% of the code in Aider’s last release was written by Aider itself (HISTORY.html). Useful as a self-host confidence signal — they’ve eaten their own cooking.
  • Stars: 48.9k / forks: 4.9k as fetched this session. README topics list anthropic, openai, claude-3, gpt-4o, gemini, llama, cli, command-line.
  • Active issues: ~1.4k open, ~489 open PRs. Velocity is high; expect churn.
  • Cursor — IDE-native equivalent; Aider is the terminal equivalent.
  • Claude Code — Anthropic’s own terminal agent; overlaps on workflow but Aider is model-agnostic and Apache-2.0.
  • ChatGPT — Aider works with OpenAI’s API; ChatGPT is the consumer surface, Aider is the dev tool.

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