Aider — programmatic system-message prepend via `--message-file`

Category 3 (programmatic). 100% reliable when implemented.

Aider is a CLI pair-programmer that drives the edit loop against a local repo. It does not host MCP servers and does not document a session-start hook, but it does support --message-file <path> to inject a primer message at conversation start — exactly the surface the boot recipe needs.

The recipe: write ai-memory boot output to a tempfile and pass that file to aider --message-file. The Rust-native cross-platform equivalent is ai-memory wrap aider (PR-6 of issue #487) — same semantics, no shell required.

Note on ai-memory’s own LLM backend. This doc covers Aider AS the AI client (reading ai-memory boot output). If you also want ai-memory’s smart/autonomous-tier features (query expansion, auto-tag, contradiction detection — which call out to an LLM internally), the recommended path post-#1146 (v0.7.0) is a [llm] section in ~/.config/ai-memory/config.toml — every surface (CLI, MCP, HTTP daemon, boot banner) reads the same file. See ../CONFIG_SCHEMA.md. Shell-export overrides (export AI_MEMORY_LLM_BACKEND=... in .zshrc) still work for the CLI subprocess Aider launches. For the MCP-server posture (where shell exports do NOT reach the spawned subprocess), see llm-backends.md.

Wrapper script

Save as ~/.local/bin/aider-with-memory and make it executable:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
# Wraps `aider` with ai-memory boot context injected via --message-file.
# Recipe shown in bash for clarity; PR-6 of issue #487 ships an
# `ai-memory wrap aider` Rust subcommand with identical semantics.
set -euo pipefail

TMP=$(mktemp -t ai-memory-boot.XXXXXX)
trap 'rm -f "$TMP"' EXIT

# Header is preserved so the user sees ok/info/warn status in the chat
# transcript. --message-file content becomes the first user-side turn,
# so we phrase it as context rather than a directive.
{
  echo "## Recent context from ai-memory (read-only, prepended at session start)"
  echo
  ai-memory boot --quiet --format text --limit 10 || true
  echo
  echo "Reference the above when relevant to the user's request."
} > "$TMP"

exec aider --message-file "$TMP" "$@"

Then alias aider to this wrapper, or invoke aider-with-memory instead. For the Rust-native version (works on Windows, no shell, no tempfile lifetime issues):

ai-memory wrap aider -- <aider args>

Why `--message-file` and not `--read`

Aider also supports --read <file> to add files to the chat context as read-only sources. That would also work, but --message-file is closer to the semantic the recipe wants: a primer turn at session start, not a permanent file in the edit window. --read would surface boot context in every subsequent file diff, which is noisier than the recipe needs.

If you specifically want the boot context to persist across /clear inside an aider session, use --read against a stable path instead of the tempfile pattern above:

ai-memory boot --quiet --format text --limit 10 > ~/.aider/memory-boot.txt
exec aider --read ~/.aider/memory-boot.txt "$@"

Trade-off: stale context until you re-run ai-memory boot. The tempfile pattern always reflects current memory state at launch.

Quick install

Manual install only until PR-2’s installer follow-up adds explicit aider support. The wrapper script above is the manual form; track the installer issue for one-line bootstrap.

End-user diagnostic

Aider streams the --message-file contents into the chat as the first turn, so the ai-memory boot status header is visible in the transcript. The four headers documented in README.md tell ok / info-empty / info-greenfield / warn-db apart. If you see neither header nor body, the wrapper didn’t run — check which aider resolves to the wrapper.

Limitations

Aider does not host MCP servers; ai-memory-mcp cannot be registered as a tool here. Mid-session recall (beyond the boot prepend) would require Aider to grow MCP support upstream.
--message-file content counts against the context window of the underlying model. Tune --budget-tokens if you see truncation.
The tempfile is cleaned up via trap on shell exit; if aider daemonizes (it doesn’t today, but version-dependent), you may need to switch to a stable path.
Aider’s /clear command wipes the chat — including the --message-file primer. Re-run aider (or use the --read pattern above) to reload boot context.

Better, when Aider lands a session-start hook

We have an open feature request at the Aider repo to add a documented session-start hook (cross-filed from issue #487). When that ships, replace the wrapper with a hook entry pointing at:

ai-memory boot --quiet --no-header --limit 10 --budget-tokens 4096

This recipe will be updated in place once the hook lands.

README.md — integration matrix and the universal primitive.
codex-cli.md — same wrapper-script pattern.
Issue #487 — RCA + cross-files for the Aider hook request.

Aider — programmatic system-message prepend via --message-file