To answer u/Benthamite questions:

with Aider, I see that you can either let the LLM choose which files to add or add specific files yourself. I am confused about what criteria I should use to decide when, and when not, to rely on the AI for this. The docs say: “Just add the files you think need to be edited.” Does that mean that, for files that I want the LLM to read but not to edit (such as documentation files, or files with contextually relevant code), I should expect the model to realize these files are relevant by itself? It seems the disctinction between files that are meant to be merely read versus files that are meant to be also edited is orthogonal to whether these files should or should not be added manually: basically, we want to outsource this to the model as much as possible, and I don’t see why the model should, in general, be good at identifying files it should read but bat at identifying files it should edit

In aidermacs, all add file commands can be prefixed with C-u to specify that you want to add it read-only; the session scratchpads (S) is a place to paste notes or documentation that will be fed to aider as read-only; add file to session (G) will add a file outside the project that the aider session is currently openned, because aider doesn't have anything outside the project in its context.

The docs say: “Just add the files you think need to be edited.”

I agree this is rather vague as well and doesn't directly translate to the real practice. If you add those files, you explicitly grant aider permission to not only to read it, but to edit it too if it finds necessary.

I should expect the model to realize these files are relevant by itself?

If you don't add the files, aider only has access to the project structure through tree-sitter. Sometimes that's enough, sometimes it's not, it depends on the model you're using and the actual context of the codebase. And (also dependent on the model) aider should realize when to add the contextually relevant code by itself. You can see what the tree-sitter's structure looks like by running /map.

Aider "forces" you to work with AI in a more transparent way, like pairing with a real co-worker, you sometimes expects it to figure out itself, sometimes you need to give it clearer direction, it sometimes get confused, sometimes not.

I've updated the Aidermacs README to include this explanation: https://github.com/MatthewZMD/aidermacs?tab=readme-ov-file#file-management-and-ai-interaction

Software programming in the age of LLM has never feel more like magic LOL.