Aider doesn’t provide any interface that’s integrated into the editor tool, as you point out. That might be true for other similar side-by-side tools that I am not aware of.
But, if you tell aider to watch your files, you can drop a specially formatted comment into your file, and aider will see that and use it as a prompt.
So the integration is sort of “implicit”. Which sounds kinda like the cheap way to go, in comparison to the current brand name tools that have their own chat boxes, dropdowns with mode selectors (ask, edit, agent), and so on.
But look further into the future and an ambient interface is probably where we end up. Something where the Ai agent is just watching what you do, maybe even watching your eyes and seeing what you’re attending to, and then harmonizing its attention to what you are attending to.
But, if you tell aider to watch your files, you can drop a specially formatted comment into your file, and aider will see that and use it as a prompt.
So the integration is sort of “implicit”. Which sounds kinda like the cheap way to go, in comparison to the current brand name tools that have their own chat boxes, dropdowns with mode selectors (ask, edit, agent), and so on.
But look further into the future and an ambient interface is probably where we end up. Something where the Ai agent is just watching what you do, maybe even watching your eyes and seeing what you’re attending to, and then harmonizing its attention to what you are attending to.
But I dunno, i’m just guessing