Aider Review (2026)

Aider is the open-source CLI pair programmer that quietly powers a lot of indie dev workflows in 2026. It edits files in your repo, commits each change to git automatically (with a generated message), and works with any model — Claude Sonnet 4.5, GPT-5.1, Gemini 2.5 Pro, DeepSeek, and local Llama / Qwen models. The 2026 release added 'architect mode' (a planner model + executor model split that consistently outperforms either alone), better repo-map context, and improved diff-based editing that costs fewer tokens than competitors. It's not a full agent — it's an excellent pair-programmer that respects your git history and your wallet.