I was using aider quite a lot from ~ 7 months ago to ~ 3 months ago. I had to stop because they refuse to implement MCPs and Claude/Codex style agentic workflow just yields better results.

Have you tried Aider-desk? (https://github.com/hotovo/aider-desk)

I haven’t fully tested it yet, but I found it because its supports JetBrains IDE integration. It has MCPs as well.

Still loyal to aider. It just fits my style better, as a very fine tool. I have my workflow and scripts around it, switch freely between gpt-5/sonnet (a bit of gemini-2.5-pro too) and enjoying life.

I wish it was maintained by a larger team though. It has a single maintainer and they seem to be backlogged or working on other stuff. If there was an aider fork that ran forward with capabilities I'd happily switch.

That said, I haven't tried Claude Code firsthand, only saw friends using it. I'm not comfortable letting agents loose on my production codebase.

There is https://github.com/dwash96/aider-ce

'This project aims to be compatible with upstream Aider, but with priority commits merged in and with some opportunistic bug fixes and optimizations'

> I'm not comfortable letting agents loose on my production codebase.

Why?

I still use aider, because often I know better what to do.