Lightweight version of Aider meant for editing multiple files in an existing repo.

The idea behind Aider is that you can ask an LLM to make changes in code files and it will use search/replace commands so you don't have to copy paste anything.

Compared to the original, this remake has the following features:

Direct code generation with search/replace blocks like in Aider, but with very concise instructions to avoid distracting the model. Also the instructions on how to write search/replace blocks is at the end of the prompt instead, and uses a format that is less likely to have syntax issues (markdown code blocks instead of arrows).

1. An LLM is given code blocks containing the content of selected files, followed by the user instruction. There is no system prompt, so the model can focus exclusively on solving the coding task.
2. A second request is sent with the code blocks first, then the previous prompt with the response from the first step, then some instructions on how to make search/replace blocks. This maximizes the quality at the cost of being slower and more expensive.

• Clipboard Input (. prefix): Use clipboard content instead of project files for analysis
• Copy Project (copy command): Copy all selected files to clipboard
• Paste Changes (paste command): Apply search/replace blocks from clipboard

The instructions are simple and concise, so this tool uses far fewer tokens than the real Aider. The two-step approach allows the LLM to perform better by avoiding distracting instructions. The tool is also designed so you can configure it once in advance and then start coding right away after launching the tool.

This tool works best when you have multiple files where modifications often require changing several parts across them. You can select which files to include in each editing session.

1. Create an env variable called OPENROUTER_API_KEY containing your OpenRouter key
2. Create a config.json file with your projects (see example below)
3. Run aider-lite.py with the project ID as a parameter: python aider-lite.py my-project
4. Toggle which files to include by entering their number
5. Write an instruction like "Add an API to obtain the list of documents" and press enter
6. Review the changes made by the LLM using something like Github Desktop

Example config.json:

{
  "projects": [
    {
      "id": "my-project",
      "basePath": "/path/to/project",
      "files": [
        {
          "name": "utils.py",
          "language": "python",
          "included": false
        },
        {
          "name": "main.py",
          "language": "python",
          "included": true
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}