~/distillery setup → aider

Overview

Aider is a command-line AI pair programmer. Aider does not natively support a custom Anthropic base URL; instead, it uses its OpenAI-compatible client with the `--openai-api-base` flag. The `openai/claude-sonnet-4-5` model prefix tells Aider to use OpenAI-format routing while targeting a Claude model. The Distillery exposes `/v1/chat/completions` specifically for this case.

Prerequisites

You have The Distillery installed and running locally on port 3080 with the OpenAI adapter enabled. Aider 0.60 or newer is required.

Run Aider with two flags: `--openai-api-base` pointing at the proxy's OpenAI adapter endpoint, and `--model openai/claude-sonnet-4-5` to select the model via OpenAI-format routing.

To make this persistent, add these flags to `~/.aider.conf.yml`. Set `OPENAI_API_KEY` to any non-empty value: Aider requires the variable, but The Distillery ignores it locally:

aider --openai-api-base http://localhost:3080/v1 --model openai/claude-sonnet-4-5

openai-api-base: http://localhost:3080/v1
model: openai/claude-sonnet-4-5

# Then set the required env var:
export OPENAI_API_KEY=unused

# File location: %USERPROFILE%\.aider.conf.yml
openai-api-base: http://localhost:3080/v1
model: openai/claude-sonnet-4-5

# Then set the required env var:
set OPENAI_API_KEY=unused