Running Open-Source AI Coding Assistants Aider and Claude Dev (2024)
I tried out Open Source coding assistants Aider and Claude Dev. They’re both pretty cool, and this is how I got them running.
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I absolutely love GitHub Copilot. And I’ve been trying out Cursor (paid) to feel that energy as well. The open-source options have been getting cooler. So I tried them out today to figure out how to get started. It’s really easy!
To get Claude Dev running
Get the VS Code extension.
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Use the
Cmd + Shift + P
shortcut to open the command palette and typeClaude Dev: Open In New Tab
to start a new task right in the editor.
You’ll need a Claude platform key from Anthropic to run this.
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To build Claude Dev yourself
If you want to run it from source, you can just:
git clone https://github.com/saoudrizwan/claude-dev.git
Go to the directory and type
npm run install:all
Claude Dev only runs with Claude models. If you’re an OpenAI fan like me, you’ll think to yourself 🤔 …. And then you will turn your attention to Aider.
To get Aider running
Aider is for CLI-y people. That’s you. I think. Otherwise you wouldn’t still be reading this Medium post.
Get ready to pip …
I had to run pip
which always gives me the shivers in case I don’t have the right version of Python or what-not. Gah.
python -m pip install aider-chat
OMG it worked. And then I sat in my repo and added my OAI key.
export OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...
aider
Alternatively I can enter my Anthropic key.
export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-...
aider
To choose which model you want to run with, here’s the options for OAI:
# Aider uses gpt-4o by default (or use --4o)
aider
# GPT-4 Turbo (1106)
aider --4-turbo
# GPT-3.5 Turbo
aider --35-turbo
# List models available from OpenAI
aider --models openai/
Listing them out feels like comfort food.
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These little shortcut flags like --4o
and --sonnet
are really cute.
[--opus] [--sonnet] [--4] [--4o] [--mini] [--4-turbo] [--35turbo] [--deepseek]
First run of Aider in my repo
From within my terminal in VS Code I’m warned that my output won’t be as cool.
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Cost-wise my GPT-4o cost less than Anthropic to explain to me about my stuff. I can reduce the cost of Anthropic’s run by turning on the Aider cache and saying aider --cache-prompts --no-stream
to make that happen.
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From the Aider docs on caching this is neat:
Preventing cache expiration: Aider can ping the provider to keep your prompt cache warm and prevent it from expiring. By default, Anthropic keeps your cache for 5 minutes. Use
--cache-keepalive-pings N
to tell aider to ping every 5 minutes to keep the cache warm. Aider will ping up toN
times over a period ofN*5
minutes after each message you send.
You can also run Aider in a browser by typing:
aider --browser
My optimism started to wane when I ran into the typical complaint of not having the right pip
etc.
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The browser window popped up, and I asked the same question of: “What does this code do?”
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Okay, that’s just how this thing works. It’s always running. You’ll need to manually add files for the context.
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In settings you’re able to have it hot-reload the repo context.
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Next steps
Okay! I think I’ve Aider’d and Claude Dev’d enough for today. I hope you feel a little smarter and open-source-y! I didn’t run either of these with a local model but I know I can if I wanted to stay longer. But need to go run back to the AI revolution. Cheers —JM