aider \
  --model gemini/gemini-2.5-pro-preview-05-06 \
  --editor-model gemini/gemini-2.5-flash-preview-05-20 \
  --weak-model gemini/gemini-2.5-flash-preview-05-20 \
  --cache-prompts --cache-keepalive-ping 6 \
  --watch-files \
  --read .env/CONVENTIONS.md \
  --lint-cmd .env/do-lint.sh \
  <file1> <file2>

• --model gemini: works great, costs around $1/day for my usage
• --cache-prompts: save some money
• --cache-keepalive-ping 6: keep the cache alive for half an hour
• --watch-files: enable watching for AI! comments
• --read CONVENTIONS.md: provide style and preferences

Share recent git activity on session start

Add the last three diffs to the chat history:

/run git diff HEAD~3 | cat

(The pipe to cat ensures that the pager isn’t invoked, such as when using delta.)

source

Code style and preferences

CONVENTIONS.md:

- use black formatting
- prefer to provide type hints
- use logging/stderr for status messages and print/stdout for program output
- you can use the following libraries frequently: tqdm, rich, humanize

Tracking Aider usage

Aider uses (aider) in the git commit author field:

commit 5fd6ffeaad3750d8cfeab84cc0ea0adb21bfa6a6 (HEAD)
Author: Willi Ballenthin (aider) <willi.ballenthin@gmail.com>
Date:   Tue Jan 7 19:51:45 2025 +0000

    feat: Optimize database indices

So you can do git log | grep "(aider)" or further analytics.

This also means you may want to cleanup git history before contributing to external projects. In lazygit, press a-a on the commit to reset the author.

source

Disable analytics

aider --analytics-disable

Run subcommands using direnv configuration

See here: https://github.com/direnv/direnv/issues/262

eval "$(direnv export zsh)" && just lint

Or, provide a linter command, like do-lint.sh and pass --lint-cmd .../do-lint.sh.