aider

Aider MCP Server exposes Aider's powerful file editing capabilities through the Model Context Protocol, enabling MCP clients like Claude Desktop or Cursor IDE to interact with your code repositories. It supports common tasks such as editing existing files, creating new files, extracting code blocks from markdown or text, retrieving git status, and checking Aider installation and configuration. By running the server in MCP protocol mode over stdio, you can seamlessly integrate with tooling that speaks the MCP standard, using Aider as the editing backend. The server is designed to work with uvx (the UV runtime) or via pip-installation, giving you flexibility in how you host and run it in your development environment.

Prerequisites:

• Python 3.8 or higher
• Git installed
• Optional: uv (for the recommended UV-based run)
• An API key for OpenAI or Anthropic (depending on which model you want Aider to use)
• Aider installed (pip install aider-chat)

Installation steps (multiple options):

Option 1: Using UV (Recommended)

1. Install uv if you don't have it:

curl -fsSL https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | bash

2. Run the MCP server with uvx:

uvx aider-mcp

Option 2: Using Python pip package

1. Install the package:

pip install aider-mcp

2. Run the server:

aider-mcp

Option 3: Local development (editable install)

1. Clone the repository (replace with actual URL if needed):

git clone https://github.com/yourusername/aider-mcp-server.git
cd aider-mcp-server

2. Install in editable mode:

pip install -e .

3. Run the server:

aider-mcp

Prerequisites recap:

• Ensure Python 3.8+ is available in your PATH
• Install and configure Aider (pip install aider-chat) and obtain API keys as needed
• Have a git repository ready for editing tasks if you plan to use git-related tools

Tips and notes:

• Environment variables can be provided directly or via .env files; common vars include AIDER_PATH, REPO_PATH, AIDER_CONFIG_FILE, AIDER_ENV_FILE, OPENAI_API_KEY, and ANTHROPIC_API_KEY.
• The MCP server operates over stdin/stdout when used with MCP clients; ensure your client supports the protocol.
• Tools exposed by the server include: edit_files, create_files, git_status, extract_code, aider_status, and aider_config. These map to Aider-based actions such as editing code, creating new files, inspecting git status, extracting code blocks, and querying Aider configuration.
• You can configure the server to point to a specific repository with --repo-path or REPO_PATH, and customize Aider behavior with --aider-path and --config-file.
• For debugging, use the MCP inspector (npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector uvx aider-mcp) to explore available tools and schemas.