Aider Delegate

You are the orchestrator. Hand a bounded coding task to a separate implementer - Aider - then review what it produced and land it yourself. You write the brief and own the judgment; Aider does the typing in its own run; you verify and commit.

The loop needs only a shell command and file access, so any comparable orchestrator can drive it.

The one thing to know about Aider

Aider commits by default. Two of its defaults would destroy the reviewable diff this skill exists to produce:

```
--auto-commits
```
(default
```
True
```
) - Aider commits its own edits after each exchange.
```
--dirty-commits
```
(default
```
True
```
) - Aider commits your pre-existing uncommitted work before it starts editing.

The relay always passes

--no-auto-commits

and

--no-dirty-commits

, and neither is configurable through it. If you ever drive

aider

by hand instead of through the relay, pass both yourself, or the work lands as commits you never reviewed. The relay also passes

--no-gitignore

, because Aider otherwise writes

.aider*

into

.gitignore

on startup and dirties the tree you are about to read.

When NOT to use this

The task is small enough to do inline; delegation overhead is not worth it.
The
```
aider
```
CLI is not installed, or no model is configured for it.
You want the implementer to manage its own commits. Aider can, but this skill deliberately turns that off - the diff is the deliverable.

Prerequisites (check once)

Install Aider -
```
python -m pip install aider-chat
```
, or the standalone installer from the Aider install docs.
Configure a model. Aider reads provider keys from the environment (
```
OPENAI_API_KEY
```
,
```
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY
```
, …) or its own config; see Aider's model docs.
Confirm
```
aider --version
```
succeeds.
Work in, or point
```
--cd
```
at, the target git repository.

Choose the model

Aider uses its own configured model when

--model

is omitted. Pass

--model <name>

to pick another.

Local and self-hosted models

Aider talks to any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, so this is also the skill for delegating to a model running on the user's own hardware - llama.cpp's server, Ollama, vLLM, LM Studio, or anything else that serves the same API. Pair

--model

with

--api-base

bash

node "<skill-dir>/scripts/relay.mjs" --brief brief.txt --cd /path/to/repo \
  --model openai/<served-model-name> --api-base http://127.0.0.1:<port>/v1

Three things differ from a hosted provider:

The
openai/
prefix is required. It tells Aider to speak the OpenAI protocol to your endpoint; the part after it is whatever name your server reports, not a provider catalog name.
A placeholder key is still needed. Export any non-empty
```
OPENAI_API_KEY
```
. The client library requires the header even when the server ignores its value.
Ask for a smaller edit format. Local models often fail Aider's default
```
diff
```
format, which requires exact search/replace blocks.
```
--edit-format whole
```
trades tokens for reliability; keep the brief's scope tight with
```
--file
```
so whole-file rewrites stay cheap.

A local endpoint that is not running looks like a hang, not an error: Aider retries the connection until the relay's

--timeout

watchdog fires and reports

status: "timeout"

. Confirm the server is up before dispatching a long brief.

Staying offline

No account or provider registration is involved: Aider is a pip install, the endpoint is yours, and

OPENAI_API_KEY

only has to be non-empty. The relay pins the flags that would otherwise reach the network on their own -

--no-check-update

--no-analytics

(Aider's own default is

random

, which opts some sessions in by itself), and

--no-detect-urls

, without which Aider offers to scrape any URL in the brief and

--yes-always

accepts that offer silently.

--no-suggest-shell-commands

closes the remaining path by which a run could reach the network without being asked to. What stays outside the relay's control is the brief itself: instructions that tell Aider to install a package or call an API will still be carried out, and

--auto-lint

runs the repository's own tooling. Offline here means nothing in the dispatch path reaches out on its own - not that a sandbox is stopping it.

The loop

Run these five steps per task. Steps 1, 4, and 5 require judgment; 2 and 3 are mechanical.

1. Write the brief

Aider sees only the text you send plus the files in its editing scope - no chat history or shared context. Include the goal, current state, what to change, what to leave untouched, the project's actual gates, and a report contract. Keep one task per brief. See references/writing-the-brief.md.

2. Dispatch

Use the bundled helper. It wraps Aider's headless

--message-file

mode, captures the run, and writes

result.json

. (

<skill-dir>

is the installed folder containing this

SKILL.md

bash

node "<skill-dir>/scripts/relay.mjs" --brief brief.txt --cd /path/to/repo
# choose a model:                        add --model <name>
# point at an OpenAI-compatible server:  add --api-base <url>
# scope the edit surface:                add --file <path> (repeatable), --read <path> for context only
# dry run, no files modified:            add --read-only
# continue the previous chat:            add --resume-last  (delta brief only)
# hard time limit (watchdog):            add --timeout 2h  (the 30m default suits short runs; implementation briefs routinely need 1-2h)
# see all options:                       node .../relay.mjs --help

The child process's cwd pins the workspace. The brief is delivered with

--message-file

, so it never rides argv: it stays out of the host process list and clear of the OS argument size cap. The relay writes artifacts under the system temp dir by default and never commits. See references/dispatch-and-poll.md.

3. Wait for completion

The helper blocks until Aider finishes. Run it with the orchestrator's background-command facility, or background it in the shell and poll for

result.json

. A pre-run usage error exits 2 and writes no result; a missing

aider

exits 127 and writes

status: "aider_unavailable"

Trust process state and the working tree over a progress display. Completion means the process exited and

result.json

exists. Aider's report is the

finalMessage

field in

result.json

(also printed in full on stdout between the report markers).

Aider exits 0 even when it never reached a model, so the relay scans the run for Aider's own endpoint and authentication errors and reports

status: "failed"

when it finds one. Treat a

failed

status with an

error

mentioning the endpoint as a configuration problem, not a coding failure.

4. Review - do not trust the self-report

Treat Aider's final message and gate claims as claims:

Re-run the project's gates yourself.
Read the diff against the brief, starting with
```
touchedFiles
```
.
Run relevant guard skills if installed.
Round-trip migrations and grep for dangling references after removals or renames.

Aider's

--auto-lint

is on by default, so it may have already run a linter and fixed its own complaints. That is Aider's lint, not your gates - run yours anyway. See references/review-and-land.md.

5. Land it

The implementer edits the working tree; the orchestrator commits. Commit only after the gates pass and the diff holds. If rework is needed, send a delta brief with

--resume-last

, then review again.

Autonomy and permissions

The relay passes

--yes-always

, Aider's own term for auto-confirming every prompt, because a headless run cannot answer one. Understand what that consents to in advance. Auto-confirmation applies to every prompt Aider would otherwise raise, and Aider's prompts are not limited to file edits: left at its defaults it also offers to run shell commands it has suggested, and

--yes-always

would accept those with nobody reading them. The relay therefore pins

--no-suggest-shell-commands

, which removes that path.

What remains is not a sandbox, and nothing here pretends otherwise. Aider has no permission modes and no isolation: within its file scope it edits freely, and

--auto-lint

(on by default) runs whatever linter the repository configures. A brief that tells Aider to run a command still gets a command run. Delegation is the authorization; if a run must not be able to touch the host, run it in a container or a throwaway worktree, because no flag in this relay will give you that.

File selection is not a security boundary.

--file

--read

, and

--subtree-only

set what Aider puts in its chat context, which is a scoping and token-cost decision. They do not confine what it can reach. See references/writing-the-brief.md.

--read-only

maps to Aider's

--dry-run

, which performs the run without modifying files. The relay does not independently verify that claim - it reports what

git status --porcelain

shows and warns if a

--read-only

run left the tree changed.

touchedFiles

and the diff, not a flag, are the guarantee.

Resume

Aider has no session ids. Its resume unit is the chat history file it keeps in the repository (

.aider.chat.history.md

), so

--resume-last

maps to Aider's

--restore-chat-history

and

--history-file

pins a specific one. Because that history lives in the repo, resume is per-worktree, not per-user: two clones of the same project do not share it.

Authorization model

Delegation is something the human opts into. Once they have ("run this queue", "proceed"), committing verified, gate-passing work is the agreed contract. Two limits remain: surface, don't absorb (report Aider's design decisions, defensible-but-unasked turns, and non-blocking nitpicks) and stop for scope changes (if correct completion needs going beyond the brief, ask instead of expanding the mandate). See references/review-and-land.md.

References

references/writing-the-brief.md - structure, report contract, real gates, file scope, and delta briefs.
references/dispatch-and-poll.md - flags, artifacts,
```
result.json
```
, polling, and failure recovery.
references/review-and-land.md - review checklist, the commit boundary, and rework through Aider's chat history.
references/multi-task-queues.md - sequential queues, constraint carry-forward, progress tracking, and the final coherence pass.

aider-delegate

NPX Install

Tags

SKILL.md Content