aider-script

aider-script is a CLI tool that streamlines using aider for common tasks, by allowing you to use reusable prompts templates which support being passed arguments when run.

• Define reusable prompt templates in Markdown
• Use variables in your prompt templates
• Specify in your template which files should automatically be loaded into context when running the prompt
• Commit the prompt templates to your repo to share with your team and refine them over time

For example you might have a template which adds an API route to your backend server, and it could take the URL pattern as an argument. You might have another template to add unit tests for a React component given the component name, and another which generates mock data for a third-party API call given the object schema name.

Table of Contents

• Installation
• Usage
• Template Syntax
  • Case Conversion Filters
• Frontmatter Configuration

Installation

Make sure you've installed and set up aider first.

Install using Cargo:

cargo install aider-script

Usage

Basic Usage

aider-script <template-file> [template-arguments...]

Example Template

Each prompt template is a markdown document with a frontmatter section (in YAML) which configures:

• args: the names of any arguments to be passed into the template
• read: files to be added to the LLM’s context as read-only
• edit: files to be edited by aider

All of the config options are optional.

---
args:
  - QUERY_NAME # Arguments to be interpolated into the template below
read:
  - "src/schema.graphql" # Files to read into the LLM context
edit:
  - "src/fixtures/mocks.ts" # Files to be edited by aider
---

# Generate mock data for {{ QUERY_NAME }}

Create a new file called `src/mocks/{{ QUERY_NAME | kebab }}.ts`. Add a new mock response object that matches the type definition for {{ QUERY_NAME }}.

Running the Template

# Basic usage
aider-script example.md myFunctionName

Arguments should be passed to the CLI

Preview the generated message

The --preview-message lets you see the message that will be passed to aider without actually running it (handy for double checking you’ve got the template right).

# Preview without running
$ aider-script --preview-message example.md ListMyFavouritesQuery

Generated message:
------------------

# Generate mock data for ListMyFavouritesQuery

...

Template Syntax

Templates use tera templating syntax (see the example above). You can use variables from template arguments in your markdown.

Case Conversion Filters

aider-script provides several case conversion filters to transform strings:

Filter	Example output
camel	fooBarBaz
pascal	FooBarBaz
kebab	foo-bar-baz
snake	foo_bar_baz

Example usage:

Create a file called `{{ name | kebab }}.tsx` that exports a component called `{{ name | pascal }}`.

Tera also provides several built-in casing filters:

• upper: Converts a string to UPPERCASE
• lower: Converts a string to lowercase
• title: Capitalizes each word inside a sentence
• capitalize: Returns the string with all its characters lowercased apart from the first char which is uppercased

See the Tera documentation for more details.

Frontmatter Configuration

The template's frontmatter can specify:

• args: Required template arguments
• read: Files to be passed as read-only to aider
• edit: Files to be edited by aider

These are all optional.