Aider Delegate

You are the orchestrator. Hand a bounded coding task to a separate implementer - Aider - then

review what it produced and land it yourself. You write the brief and own the judgment; Aider does the

typing in its own run; you verify and commit.

The loop needs only a shell command and file access, so any comparable orchestrator can drive it.

The one thing to know about Aider

Aider commits by default. Two of its defaults would destroy the reviewable diff this skill exists

to produce:

• --auto-commits (default True) - Aider commits its own edits after each exchange.

• --dirty-commits (default True) - Aider commits your pre-existing uncommitted work before it

starts editing.

The relay always passes --no-auto-commits and --no-dirty-commits, and neither is configurable

through it. If you ever drive aider by hand instead of through the relay, pass both yourself, or the

work lands as commits you never reviewed. The relay also passes --no-gitignore, because Aider

otherwise writes .aider* into .gitignore on startup and dirties the tree you are about to read.

When NOT to use this

• The task is small enough to do inline; delegation overhead is not worth it.

• The aider CLI is not installed, or no model is configured for it.

• You want the implementer to manage its own commits. Aider can, but this skill deliberately turns

that off - the diff is the deliverable.

Prerequisites (check once)

• Install Aider - python -m pip install aider-chat, or the standalone installer from the

Aider install docs.

• Configure a model. Aider reads provider keys from the environment (OPENAI_API_KEY,

ANTHROPIC_API_KEY, …) or its own config; see Aider's model docs.

• Confirm aider --version succeeds.

• Work in, or point --cd at, the target git repository.

Choose the model

Aider uses its own configured model when --model is omitted. Pass --model <name> to pick another.

Local and self-hosted models

Aider talks to any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, so this is also the skill for delegating to a model

running on the user's own hardware - llama.cpp's server, Ollama, vLLM, LM Studio, or anything else

that serves the same API. Pair --model with --api-base:

node "<skill-dir>/scripts/relay.mjs" --brief brief.txt --cd /path/to/repo \

  --model openai/<served-model-name> --api-base http://127.0.0.1:<port>/v1

Three things differ from a hosted provider:

• **The openai/ prefix is required.** It tells Aider to speak the OpenAI protocol to your endpoint;

the part after it is whatever name your server reports, not a provider catalog name.

• A placeholder key is still needed. Export any non-empty OPENAI_API_KEY. The client library

requires the header even when the server ignores its value.

• Ask for a smaller edit format. Local models often fail Aider's default diff format, which

requires exact search/replace blocks. --edit-format whole trades tokens for reliability; keep the

brief's scope tight with --file so whole-file rewrites stay cheap.

A local endpoint that is not running looks like a hang, not an error: Aider retries the connection

until the relay's --timeout watchdog fires and reports status: "timeout". Confirm the server is up

before dispatching a long brief.

Staying offline

No account or provider registration is involved: Aider is a pip install, the endpoint is yours, and

OPENAI_API_KEY only has to be non-empty. The relay pins the flags that would otherwise reach the

network on their own - --no-check-update, --no-analytics (Aider's own default is random, which

opts some sessions in by itself), and --no-detect-urls, without which Aider offers to scrape any URL

in the brief and --yes-always accepts that offer silently.

--no-suggest-shell-commands closes the remaining path by which a run could reach the network without

being asked to. What stays outside the relay's control is the brief itself: instructions that tell

Aider to install a package or call an API will still be carried out, and --auto-lint runs the

repository's own tooling. Offline here means nothing in the dispatch path reaches out on its own - not

that a sandbox is stopping it.

The loop

Run these five steps per task. Steps 1, 4, and 5 require judgment; 2 and 3 are mechanical.

1. Write the brief

Aider sees only the text you send plus the files in its editing scope - no chat history or shared

context. Include the goal, current state, what to change, what to leave untouched, the project's

actual gates, and a report contract. Keep one task per brief. See

references/writing-the-brief.md.

2. Dispatch

For Codex orchestration of background work, install and configure the separate

codex-background support utility first. If its MCP tools or registry are missing, stop and

report the setup requirement; do not silently fall back to model-driven polling. Then invoke its

registered delegate_run MCP tool once in place of the shell example below.

Follow that skill for structured common arguments, unchanged provider flags and reattachment by

runId. Keep the request pending until completion, then continue this skill's review and landing

steps. Other orchestrators keep the shell workflow below.

Use the bundled helper. It wraps Aider's headless --message-file mode, captures the run, and writes

result.json. (<skill-dir> is the installed folder containing this SKILL.md.)

node "<skill-dir>/scripts/relay.mjs" --brief brief.txt --cd /path/to/repo

# choose a model:                        add --model <name>

# point at an OpenAI-compatible server:  add --api-base <url>

# scope the edit surface:                add --file <path> (repeatable), --read <path> for context only

# dry run, no files modified:            add --read-only

# continue the previous chat:            add --resume-last  (delta brief only)

# hard time limit (watchdog):            add --timeout 2h  (the 30m default suits short runs; implementation briefs routinely need 1-2h)

# see all options:                       node .../relay.mjs --help

The child process's cwd pins the workspace. The brief is delivered with --message-file, so it never

rides argv: it stays out of the host process list and clear of the OS argument size cap. The relay

writes artifacts under the system temp dir by default and never commits. See

references/dispatch-and-poll.md.

3. Wait for completion

Codex using codex-background keeps the original MCP request pending: no model-driven sleep,

status or log polling. Use delegate_wait only to reattach after an interrupted request.

The helper blocks until Aider finishes. Run it with the orchestrator's background-command facility, or

background it in the shell and poll for result.json. A pre-run usage error exits 2 and writes no

result; a missing aider exits 127 and writes status: "aider_unavailable".

Trust process state and the working tree over a progress display. Completion means the process exited

and result.json exists. Aider's report is the finalMessage field in result.json (also printed in

full on stdout between the report markers).

Aider exits 0 even when it never reached a model, so the relay scans the run for Aider's own endpoint

and authentication errors and reports status: "failed" when it finds one. Treat a failed status

with an error mentioning the endpoint as a configuration problem, not a coding failure.

4. Review - do not trust the self-report

Treat Aider's final message and gate claims as claims:

• Re-run the project's gates yourself.

• Read the diff against the brief, starting with touchedFiles.

• Run relevant guard skills if installed.

• Round-trip migrations and grep for dangling references after removals or renames.

Aider's --auto-lint is on by default, so it may have already run a linter and fixed its own

complaints. That is Aider's lint, not your gates - run yours anyway. See

references/review-and-land.md.

5. Land it

The implementer edits the working tree; the orchestrator commits. Commit only after the gates pass

and the diff holds. If rework is needed, send a delta brief with --resume-last, then review again.

Autonomy and permissions

The relay passes --yes-always, Aider's own term for auto-confirming every prompt, because a headless

run cannot answer one. Understand what that consents to in advance. Auto-confirmation applies to

every prompt Aider would otherwise raise, and Aider's prompts are not limited to file edits: left at

its defaults it also offers to run shell commands it has suggested, and --yes-always would accept

those with nobody reading them. The relay therefore pins --no-suggest-shell-commands, which removes

that path.

What remains is not a sandbox, and nothing here pretends otherwise. Aider has no permission modes and

no isolation: within its file scope it edits freely, and --auto-lint (on by default) runs whatever

linter the repository configures. A brief that tells Aider to run a command still gets a command run.

Delegation is the authorization; if a run must not be able to touch the host, run it in a container or

a throwaway worktree, because no flag in this relay will give you that.

File selection is not a security boundary. --file, --read, and --subtree-only set what Aider

puts in its chat context, which is a scoping and token-cost decision. They do not confine what it can

reach. See references/writing-the-brief.md.

--read-only maps to Aider's --dry-run, which performs the run without modifying files. The relay

does not independently verify that claim - it reports what git status --porcelain shows and warns if

a --read-only run left the tree changed. touchedFiles and the diff, not a flag, are the guarantee.

Resume

Aider has no session ids. Its resume unit is the chat history file it keeps in the repository

(.aider.chat.history.md), so --resume-last maps to Aider's --restore-chat-history and

--history-file pins a specific one. Because that history lives in the repo, resume is per-worktree,

not per-user: two clones of the same project do not share it.

Authorization model

Delegation is something the human opts into. Once they have ("run this queue", "proceed"), committing

verified, gate-passing work is the agreed contract. Two limits remain: surface, don't absorb

(report Aider's design decisions, defensible-but-unasked turns, and non-blocking nitpicks) and **stop

for scope changes** (if correct completion needs going beyond the brief, ask instead of expanding the

mandate). See references/review-and-land.md.

References

• references/writing-the-brief.md - structure, report contract,

real gates, file scope, and delta briefs.

• references/dispatch-and-poll.md - flags, artifacts,

result.json, polling, and failure recovery.

• references/review-and-land.md - review checklist, the commit

boundary, and rework through Aider's chat history.

• references/multi-task-queues.md - sequential queues, constraint

carry-forward, progress tracking, and the final coherence pass.