Aider is definitely in the same camp. Last time I checked, they weren't optimizing for the full "agent infinitely looping until completion" usecase, and didn't have MCP support.
But it's 100% the same class of tool and the awesome part of the unixy model is hopefully agents can be substituted in for each other in your pipeline for whichever one is better for the usecase, just like models are interoperable.
I tried aider today with a Gemini API key and billing account. Itβs not close to the experience I have with Claude Code on Saturday which was able to implement a full feature.
The main difference is I interact with Claude Code only through conversation. Aider felt much more like I was talking to two different tools, the model and Aider. For example, constantly having to add files and parse the less than ideal console output compared to how Claude code handles user feedback.
"Aider felt much more like I was talking to two different tools"
I personally see that as a plus, because other tools are lacking on the tool side. Aider seems to have solid "traditional" engineering behind its tooling.
"constantly having to add files"
That's fair. However, Aider automatically adds files that trigger it via comments and it asks to add the files that are mentioned in the conversation.
"parse the less than ideal console output"
That's fair too. Still, the models aren't there yet, so I value tools that don't hide the potential crap that thee models produce 20-30% of the time.
Put the Aider CLI into a GitHub action that's triggered by an issue creation and you're good to go.