Aider AI Coding Assistant

Configure and run Aider, an AI pair programming tool that directly edits code in your local git repository.

What This Skill Does

This skill sets up Aider with optimized defaults for AI-assisted coding:

Instructions

When the user wants to use Aider for coding tasks:

1. **Verify Prerequisites**

- Confirm you're in a git repository (Aider requires git)

- Check that the `.aider.conf.yml` configuration file exists or needs to be created

- Verify necessary API keys are available (OpenAI API key required)

2. **Configuration Setup**

- If `.aider.conf.yml` doesn't exist, create it with the following key settings:

- `model: openai/o4-mini`

- `weak-model: openai/o4-mini`

- `auto-commits: false`

- `watch-files: true`

- `suggest-shell-commands: true`

- `chat-language: English`

- `read: [conventions.org]` (if project has coding conventions)

- `editor: emacsclient` (or user's preferred editor)

3. **Launch Aider**

- Start Aider with specific files: `aider file1.py file2.js`

- Or let Aider auto-detect files: `aider`

- Add read-only context files with `--read filename`

4. **Coding Workflow**

- Use natural language to describe code changes

- Aider will propose edits in the configured format

- Review changes before accepting (auto-commits disabled)

- Use `/help` within Aider for available commands

- Use `/add filename` to add more files to the chat

- Use `/commit` to manually commit changes

5. **File Watching Mode**

- With `watch-files: true`, Aider monitors files for special comments

- Add AI coding comments in watched files to trigger automatic processing

- Useful for continuous coding assistance

6. **Advanced Features**

- Use `--message "your request"` for one-off edits without interactive chat

- Enable `--architect` mode for high-level design discussions

- Set `--test-cmd` to automatically run tests after changes

- Configure `--lint-cmd` for language-specific linting

Important Notes

Example Usage

```bash

Start with specific files

aider src/app.py tests/test_app.py

One-off edit

aider --message "Add error handling to the login function" src/auth.py

With read-only context

aider --read conventions.org src/new_feature.py

Check for updates

aider --check-update

```

Configuration File Location

Aider searches for `.aider.conf.yml` in this order:

1. Git repository root

2. Current working directory

3. Home directory

Place the configuration where it makes sense for your workflow (typically git root for project-specific settings).