AI Pair Programming in Your Terminal

Aider lets you pair program with LLMs to start a new project or build on your existing codebase.

This is ForgePair, a fork of aider-AI/aider under different governance (see SPEC.md for why). The stats/badges above are inherited from upstream aider and reflect its install base and history, not ForgePair's -- ForgePair is a young fork with its own CHANGES.md. See STATUS.md for what's done, what's known-incomplete, and where to look for more detail before relying on this fork for anything beyond experimentation.

What's different from aider

ForgePair keeps aider's terminal-first, git-native, model-agnostic core (see SPEC.md §3 for what was deliberately kept as-is) and changes two things: how the project is governed, and a handful of specific, long-requested capabilities upstream never shipped.

Governance -- so shipped work doesn't sit unreleased for months:

• CI is a real hard merge gate on main (tests across 5 Python versions x 2 OSes, lint, Docker build), not advisory -- confirmed by a direct push being rejected.
• A live merge queue (GitHub's native merge queue, org-owned repo) processes approved, green PRs automatically, without the maintainer personally clicking merge each time.
• Continuous release: every merge to main auto-computes the next version and publishes to PyPI via Trusted Publishing (OIDC) -- no stored long-lived token. This directly targets the exact failure mode found in upstream aider at fork time (commits existed, but the last PyPI release was 3+ months older than the last commit).
• Tiered contributor categories (low-risk: docs/model-metadata/ dependency bumps vs. requires deeper review) documented in CONTRIBUTING.md.

Features aider users have been requesting since 2024, with nowhere to go (see SPEC.md §2 for the sourcing):

• Native MCP (Model Context Protocol) client support (--edit-format agent) -- tools, resources, and prompts, plus authenticated remote HTTP MCP servers (bearer token / API key).
• Approval-gated apply mode (--confirm-edits) -- diffs are gated before applying, not just shown after the fact.
• Honest failure handling on provider errors -- no more silent 0-token responses on rate-limits/API failures.
• Issue/request triage that treats recurrence as a severity signal instead of dedup-closing reports into silence, and gives feature requests the same triage attention bug reports get.

See STATUS.md for what's actually verified-done today vs. still in progress, and CHANGES.md for the dated changelog.

Features

Cloud and local LLMs

Aider works best with Claude 3.7 Sonnet, DeepSeek R1 & Chat V3, OpenAI o1, o3-mini & GPT-4o, but can connect to almost any LLM, including local models.

Maps your codebase

Aider makes a map of your entire codebase, which helps it work well in larger projects.

100+ code languages

Aider works with most popular programming languages: python, javascript, rust, ruby, go, cpp, php, html, css, and dozens more.

Git integration

Aider automatically commits changes with sensible commit messages. Use familiar git tools to easily diff, manage and undo AI changes.

Use in your IDE

Use aider from within your favorite IDE or editor. Ask for changes by adding comments to your code and aider will get to work.

Images & web pages

Add images and web pages to the chat to provide visual context, screenshots, reference docs, etc.

Voice-to-code

Speak with aider about your code! Request new features, test cases or bug fixes using your voice and let aider implement the changes.

Linting & testing

Automatically lint and test your code every time aider makes changes. Aider can fix problems detected by your linters and test suites.

Copy/paste to web chat

Work with any LLM via its web chat interface. Aider streamlines copy/pasting code context and edits back and forth with a browser.

Getting Started

python -m pip install aider-install
aider-install

# Change directory into your codebase
cd /to/your/project

# DeepSeek
aider --model deepseek --api-key deepseek=<key>

# Claude 3.7 Sonnet
aider --model sonnet --api-key anthropic=<key>

# o3-mini
aider --model o3-mini --api-key openai=<key>

See the installation instructions and usage documentation for more details.

More Information

Documentation

• Installation Guide
• Usage Guide
• Tutorial Videos
• Connecting to LLMs
• Configuration Options
• Troubleshooting
• FAQ

Community & Resources

• LLM Leaderboards
• GitHub Repository
• Discord Community
• Release notes
• Blog

Kind Words From Users

• "My life has changed... Aider... It's going to rock your world." — Eric S. Raymond on X
• "The best free open source AI coding assistant." — IndyDevDan on YouTube
• "The best AI coding assistant so far." — Matthew Berman on YouTube
• "Aider ... has easily quadrupled my coding productivity." — SOLAR_FIELDS on Hacker News
• "It's a cool workflow... Aider's ergonomics are perfect for me." — qup on Hacker News
• "It's really like having your senior developer live right in your Git repo - truly amazing!" — rappster on GitHub
• "What an amazing tool. It's incredible." — valyagolev on GitHub
• "Aider is such an astounding thing!" — cgrothaus on GitHub
• "It was WAY faster than I would be getting off the ground and making the first few working versions." — Daniel Feldman on X
• "THANK YOU for Aider! It really feels like a glimpse into the future of coding." — derwiki on Hacker News
• "It's just amazing. It is freeing me to do things I felt were out my comfort zone before." — Dougie on Discord
• "This project is stellar." — funkytaco on GitHub
• "Amazing project, definitely the best AI coding assistant I've used." — joshuavial on GitHub
• "I absolutely love using Aider ... It makes software development feel so much lighter as an experience." — principalideal0 on Discord
• "I have been recovering from ... surgeries ... aider ... has allowed me to continue productivity." — codeninja on Reddit
• "I am an aider addict. I'm getting so much more work done, but in less time." — dandandan on Discord
• "Aider... blows everything else out of the water hands down, there's no competition whatsoever." — SystemSculpt on Discord
• "Aider is amazing, coupled with Sonnet 3.5 it's quite mind blowing." — Josh Dingus on Discord
• "Hands down, this is the best AI coding assistant tool so far." — IndyDevDan on YouTube
• "[Aider] changed my daily coding workflows. It's mind-blowing how ...(it)... can change your life." — maledorak on Discord
• "Best agent for actual dev work in existing codebases." — Nick Dobos on X
• "One of my favorite pieces of software. Blazing trails on new paradigms!" — Chris Wall on X
• "Aider has been revolutionary for me and my work." — Starry Hope on X
• "Try aider! One of the best ways to vibe code." — Chris Wall on X
• "Freaking love Aider." — hztar on Hacker News
• "Aider is hands down the best. And it's free and opensource." — AriyaSavakaLurker on Reddit
• "Aider is also my best friend." — jzn21 on Reddit
• "Try Aider, it's worth it." — jorgejhms on Reddit
• "I like aider :)" — Chenwei Cui on X
• "Aider is the precision tool of LLM code gen... Minimal, thoughtful and capable of surgical changes ... while keeping the developer in control." — Reilly Sweetland on X
• "Cannot believe aider vibe coded a 650 LOC feature across service and cli today in 1 shot." - autopoietist on Discord
• "Oh no the secret is out! Yes, Aider is the best coding tool around. I highly, highly recommend it to anyone." — Joshua D Vander Hook on X
• "thanks to aider, i have started and finished three personal projects within the last two days" — joseph stalzyn on X
• "Been using aider as my daily driver for over a year ... I absolutely love the tool, like beyond words." — koleok on Discord
• "Aider ... is the tool to benchmark against." — BeetleB on Hacker News
• "aider is really cool" — kache on X