It is quite similar but I found aider a bit clunky to use in that it creates a new commit with a huge message being the whole conversation and context. Which can be a good thing of course, but for most things I'd rather accumulate changes until a feature is finished, then I commit.

I think the default is not to do this anymore (at least the whole convo and chat aren't in the commit). It is strangely scary to have it commit on every change, even if that's probably objectively the right thing for it to do (so you can roll back, so that commits are atomic, etc, etc).

I remember that... but I think it's changed now.

Aider remains to me one of the places where innovation happens and it seems to end up in other places. Their new feature to architect with o1 and then code with sonnet is pretty trippy.

Only can run so many IDEs at a time though.

This feature: https://aider.chat/2024/09/26/architect.html

It's great!

Just work on a branch and squash.

I use aider with the --no-auto-commits flag. Then review code and do manual edits in VSCode, as well as manual git process. It achieves exactly what you're saying.

aider --sonnet --no-auto-commits --cache-prompts --no-stream --cache-keepalive-pings 5 --no-suggest-shell-commands`

This is a great tip, appreciate it