Aider Configuration Guide

Expert assistant for configuring Aider, the AI pair programming tool. This skill helps you understand and set up comprehensive Aider configurations through `.aider.conf.yml` files.

What This Skill Does

Provides expert guidance on:

Instructions

When helping users configure Aider:

1. **Understand Requirements**

- Ask what aspects they want to configure

- Determine their primary use case (solo coding, team work, specific languages)

- Identify which models they have access to (OpenAI, Anthropic, etc.)

2. **Model Configuration**

- Guide selection between models: Claude Opus/Sonnet, GPT-4/4o, o1, DeepSeek

- Explain weak-model for commit messages (cheaper, faster)

- Configure editor-model for specific editing tasks

- Set appropriate edit formats: architect, diff, whole-file

- Recommend model-settings-file for custom models

3. **API and Authentication**

- Note: Only OpenAI and Anthropic keys go in YAML; others use `.env` file

- Configure openai-api-base for custom endpoints

- Set organization IDs when needed

- Configure SSL verification for enterprise environments

4. **Repository Map Settings**

- Set map-tokens (default 1024, use 0 to disable)

- Configure map-refresh: auto, always, files, manual

- Adjust map-multiplier-no-files for projects without specified files

5. **Git Integration**

- Enable/disable auto-commits for LLM changes

- Configure dirty-commits behavior

- Set commit attribution (author, committer, message prefixes)

- Set up custom commit-prompt for message generation

- Configure .aiderignore for excluding files

6. **Testing and Linting**

- Set up test-cmd for automated testing

- Configure auto-test (default: false)

- Define lint-cmd per language (can specify multiple)

- Enable auto-lint (default: true)

- Example: `python: flake8 --select=E,W`

7. **Output Customization**

- Choose dark-mode or light-mode

- Customize colors: user-input, assistant-output, tool-output, errors, warnings

- Set completion-menu colors

- Select code-theme: default, monokai, solarized-dark, solarized-light

- Enable show-diffs for commit visibility

8. **Performance Optimization**

- Enable cache-prompts for faster responses

- Configure cache-keepalive-pings to maintain warm cache

- Adjust max-chat-history-tokens to control context size

- Set verify-ssl appropriately for your environment

9. **History and Logging**

- Configure input-history-file, chat-history-file

- Enable restore-chat-history to continue previous sessions

- Set llm-history-file for debugging conversations

10. **Advanced Features**

- Configure voice-format (wav, webm, mp3) and voice-language

- Enable suggest-shell-commands (default: true)

- Set vim mode for VI keybindings

- Configure chat-language for non-English interactions

- Set encoding if working with non-UTF-8 files

Configuration File Location

The `.aider.conf.yml` file can be placed in:

Example Configurations

Minimal Setup

```yaml

model: gpt-4o

auto-commits: true

dark-mode: true

```

Development Team Setup

```yaml

model: claude-3-5-sonnet-20240620

weak-model: gpt-4o-mini

auto-commits: true

auto-lint: true

lint-cmd:

- "python: flake8 --select=E,W,F"

- "javascript: eslint"

test-cmd: pytest

dark-mode: true

attribute-commit-message-author: true

```

Enterprise Configuration

```yaml

openai-api-base: https://api.company.com/v1

model: gpt-4o

verify-ssl: true

cache-prompts: true

map-tokens: 2048

auto-commits: false

dirty-commits: false

show-diffs: true

```

Important Notes

Common Patterns

**Python Development:**

```yaml

model: gpt-4o

lint-cmd: "python: ruff check ."

test-cmd: pytest -v

auto-lint: true

```

**Multi-Language Project:**

```yaml

model: claude-3-5-sonnet-20240620

lint-cmd:

- "python: ruff check"

- "javascript: eslint"

- "typescript: tsc --noEmit"

```

**Conservative Workflow:**

```yaml

auto-commits: false

auto-test: false

show-diffs: true

yes-always: false

```