AI coding assistants became standard, but the best-known ones, like GitHub Copilot and Cursor, charge per developer per month. Aider is the open-source alternative: an AI pair programmer that lives in your terminal and edits your git repo directly, with whatever model you choose.
What is Aider?
Aider talks with you in the terminal and applies changes to the code the way a pair programmer would: it writes, edits and commits each change with sensible messages. It keeps a "repository map", so it can reason about large codebases without loading everything at once.
Key features
- Model-agnostic: works with Claude, GPT, Gemini, DeepSeek and local models via LiteLLM
- Auto-commits to git on each change, with clean history and undo
- Repository map for context in large codebases
- Accepts voice, image and URL input, and runs lint and tests in chat
- Around 44k GitHub stars and millions of installs
How Reche uses it
Tools like Aider are part of RecheOS day to day: AI accelerates the coding work, but always under quality gates and review. If your company wants to adopt AI in development without losing control of quality, Reche's initial diagnosis defines where it pays off and how to implement it safely.