Aider lets you pair program with LLMs in your terminal to start a new project or build on an existing codebase, connecting to almost any LLM (cloud or local), mapping your codebase, integrating with git, and supporting features like voice-to-code, image/web-page context, and automatic linting and testing.
AI pair programming in your terminal — pair programming with LLMs to start a new project or build on an existing codebase. Works with cloud and local LLMs, maps your codebase, supports 100+ programming languages, integrates with git, can be used from within an IDE/editor, accepts images and web pages as context, supports voice-to-code, and automatically lints and tests code.
Aider is an agentic coding assistant that edits files, executes shell commands, and executes arbitrary code based on LLM output. The README describes it taking action ("aider will get to work"), and it "automatically commits changes with sensible commit messages" — a multi-step autonomous workflow that modifies the codebase and git history without per-step confirmation. The surface analysis confirms shell execution and arbitrary code execution. While aider often runs interactively in a chat session, its design applies edits and commits autonomously once instructed, placing it at Tier 4. Notably, ~88% of its own recent code is written by aider itself, reinforcing a high degree of autonomous code generation, though it operates on user codebases rather than self-modifying its installed package, so it does not meet the Tier 5 bar.