Improve usage instructions?

[p-wegner]

Hi @wladimiiir,

it's great to see some activity regarding aider integrations in IDEs. Do i get it right that you could use /web http://localhost:24337/open-files within aider to add those files to the context, or how do you use the provided endpoint?

[wladimiiir]

Hello,
there is an initial implementation for this in my fork and PR with the changes is pending.

There is also some discussion started in this issue.

Honestly, I think there is still a long road until this gets merged and become a part of official aider's release (it might also not happen).

I am currently running aider with the changes locally, so you if want to try it out, clone my fork and see info here for how to run it.

As for the usage, you just need to run aider with --enable-companion or start it manually using /companion start command. Aider automatically fetches the open files from Idea and uses them in the chat.

[p-wegner]

I'm curious what paul thinks about your solution and your approach. In general i think some of the IDEs features would really integrate nicely with aider:

1. instead of the rather generic repo map, the AST and language service could be used to extend the context with the parts required for the prompt
2. after changes are done in terminal with aider, i find it tedious to review the changes within the IDE (you can manually open a file/commit diff)
3. i usually have plenty of files open because when navigating code they don't don't close automatically and i see no reason to do that yet. For people like me, using your solution would require some learning when to close files.
4. i heavily use IDE refactoring features (method/class extraction, quick fix to create classes/methods) and code navigation (e.g. navigating the call hierarchy can really help evaluation) and so do most professional software engineers i know. Extending those features with aider enriched actions within the IDE feels more natural to me than having to sync aider in terminal with what i'm currently looking at in the IDE, but i see how not having your sync feature is even worse.

I will closely follow your work and see what other ideas for intergration you come up with.