FAQ

Frequently asked questions about aider.

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How can I add ALL the files to the chat?

People regularly ask about how to add many or all of their repo's files to the chat. This is probably not a good idea and will likely do more harm than good.

The best approach is think about which files need to be changed to accomplish the task you are working on. Just add those files to the chat.

Usually when people want to add "all the files" it's because they think it will give the LLM helpful context about the overall code base. Aider will automatically give the LLM a bunch of additional context about the rest of your git repo. It does this by analyzing your entire codebase in light of the current chat to build a compact repository map.

Adding a bunch of files that are mostly irrelevant to the task at hand will often distract or confuse the LLM. The LLM will give worse coding results, and sometimese even fail to correctly edit files. Addings extra files will also increase the token costs on your OpenAI invoice.

Again, it's usually best to just add the files to the chat that will need to be modified. If you still wish to add lots of files to the chat, you can:

  • Use a wildcard when you launch aider: aider src/*.py

  • Use a wildcard with the in-chat /add command: /add src/*.py

  • Give the /add command a directory name and it will recurisvely add every file under that dir: /add src

Can I use aider in a large (mono) repo?

Aider will work in any size repo, but is not optimized for quick performance and response time in very large repos. There are some things you can do to improve performance.

Be sure to check the general usage tips before considering this large-repo specific advice. To get the best results from aider you want to be thoughtful about how you add files to the chat, regardless of your repo size.

You can change into a sub directory of your repo that contains the code you want to work on and use the --subtree-only switch. This will tell aider to ignore the repo outside of the directory you start in.

You can also create a .aiderignore file to tell aider to ignore parts of the repo that aren't relevant to your task. This file conforms to .gitignore syntax and conventions.

You can use --aiderignore <filename> to name a specific file to use for ignore patterns. You might have a few of these handy for when you want to work on frontend, backend, etc portions of your repo.

Can I use aider with multiple git repos at once?

Currently aider can only work with one repo at a time.

There are some things you can try if you need to work with multiple interrelated repos:

  • You can run aider in repo-A where you need to make a change and use /read to add some files read-only from another repo-B. This can let aider see key functions or docs from the other repo.

  • You can run aider --show-repo-map > map.md within each repo to create repo maps. You could then run aider in repo-A and use /read ../path/to/repo-B/map.md to share a high level map of the other repo.

  • You can use aider to write documentation about a repo. Inside each repo, you could run aider docs.md and work with aider to write some markdown docs. Then while using aider to edit repo-A you can /read ../path/to/repo-B/docs.md to read in those docs from the other repo.

  • In repo A, ask aider to write a small script that demonstrates the functionality you want to use in repo B. Then when you're using aider in repo B, you can /read in that script.

How can I run aider locally from source code?

To run the project locally, follow these steps:

# Clone the repository
git clone git@github.com:paul-gauthier/aider.git

# Navigate to the project directory
cd aider

# It's recommended to make a virtual environment

# Install aider in editable/development mode, 
# so it runs from the latest copy of these source files
python -m pip install -e .

# Run the local version of aider
python -m aider

Can I change the system prompts that aider uses?

Aider is set up to support different system prompts and edit formats in a modular way. If you look in the aider/coders subdirectory, you'll see there's a base coder with base prompts, and then there are a number of different specific coder implementations.

If you're thinking about experimenting with system prompts this document about benchmarking GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 on code editing might be useful background.

While it's not well documented how to add new coder subsystems, you may be able to modify an existing implementation or use it as a template to add another.

To get started, try looking at and modifying these files.

The wholefile coder is currently used by GPT-3.5 by default. You can manually select it with --edit-format whole.

  • wholefile_coder.py

  • wholefile_prompts.py

The editblock coder is currently used by GPT-4o by default. You can manually select it with --edit-format diff.

  • editblock_coder.py

  • editblock_prompts.py

The universal diff coder is currently used by GPT-4 Turbo by default. You can manually select it with --edit-format udiff.

  • udiff_coder.py

  • udiff_prompts.py

When experimenting with coder backends, it helps to run aider with --verbose --no-pretty so you can see all the raw information being sent to/from the LLM in the conversation.

You can also refer to the instructions for installing a development version of aider.

Can I share my aider chat transcript?

Yes, you can now share aider chat logs in a pretty way.

  1. Copy the markdown logs you want to share from .aider.chat.history.md and make a github gist. Or publish the raw markdown logs on the web any way you'd like.

https://gist.github.com/paul-gauthier/2087ab8b64034a078c0a209440ac8be0

  1. Take the gist URL and append it to:

https://aider.chat/share/?mdurl=

This will give you a URL like this, which shows the chat history like you'd see in a terminal:

https://aider.chat/share/?mdurl=https://gist.github.com/paul-gauthier/2087ab8b64034a078c0a209440ac8be0

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