Aider
FreeEvery AI edit lands as a Git commit you can walk back
An AI pair-programming tool for the command line that commits each change to Git automatically with a message describing what it did. A repository map gives the model the shape of the whole project rather than just the open file, and you attach the model yourself — Claude, GPT, Gemini or a local model through Ollama.
Why we picked it
Apache-2.0, 49,000 stars.
Its most concrete difference from other AI coding tools is Git. Each completed change becomes a
commit whose message says what it did. A bad edit is git reset --hard HEAD~1; a good one leaves a
readable record. The main anxiety with an AI editing code is not knowing what it touched, and
splitting work into commits turns that into reading a diff.
The repo map is the other design decision: rather than stuffing the project into context, it extracts class names, function signatures and call relationships into a graph, so the model knows where to look while the token count stays down.
To be clear about:
- Models are billed per token. The software takes nothing; the cost goes to whichever provider you attach. A local Ollama model costs nothing and is noticeably weaker on complex changes.
- Command line only, with no GUI. People used to reading diffs inside an IDE will feel it.
- Upstream activity slowed after mid-2026, with the most recent commit in May. What is there works.