Release v0.18.0

[wladimiiir]

Highlights

✨ Compact Your Conversation with the /compact Command

Long conversations can sometimes overwhelm the AI's context window. We've introduced the /compact command to solve this! It analyzes your entire chat history and condenses it into a concise summary. This keeps the most relevant information available to the AI, improving context management, leading to faster responses, and potentially reducing token costs. Simply type /compact to summarize your session and keep the conversation focused.

🚀 Blazing Fast Setup & Startup with uv

We've switched our Python package management to uv, the extremely fast Python installer and resolver from Astral. New users will experience a significantly faster initial setup, and all users will benefit from quicker application startup times. This change makes getting started and running AiderDesk smoother and more efficient.

⌨️ Revamped Prompt Field with Autocompletion & Vim Mode

The prompt input field has been rebuilt from the ground up to be more responsive and powerful. It now features intelligent autocompletion for commands and file paths, which also helps eliminate lag in very long conversations. For our power users, we've added an option in the settings to enable Vim key bindings for a more efficient, keyboard-driven workflow.

🛠️ Advanced Customization: Use Custom Aider Versions & Python Packages

AiderDesk now offers powerful customization options for advanced users and developers via environment variables:

• AIDER_DESK_AIDER_VERSION: Specify a custom version of aider-chat to use, whether it's a specific release, a development branch from Git, or even a local clone. This is perfect for testing new or custom Aider features.
• AIDER_DESK_EXTRA_PYTHON_PACKAGES: Install additional Python packages directly into AiderDesk's environment. Use this to add new libraries or override specific versions of Aider's dependencies.

Other Changes

• Agent & Model Improvements:
  • Improved reliability by retrying 'unknown' responses from Gemini models.
  • Tool results containing image data are now passed as image messages to vision-capable models.
  • Added duplicate tool call prevention in the Agent for more robust behavior.
  • More accurate cost calculation for Gemini models, now including cached tokens.
• Configuration & Environment:
  • AiderDesk now respects the model and weak-model set in your .aider.conf.yaml files (from both the project and home directories).
  • Added HOME environment variable to MCP server connections for better compatibility.
• General Fixes & Enhancements:
  • Prompts starting with / are now correctly checked as potential file paths before being treated as commands.
  • Fixed an issue where deleted MCP servers were not being closed properly.
  • The read_file power tool now safely denies attempts to read binary files.
  • Fixed the default model name for the latest Claude Sonnet version.
  • Added caching information for the Requesty provider.

💡 We’d love to hear your thoughts! Your feedback helps us improve AiderDesk - feel free to share any suggestions or issues. Happy coding! 🚀

[fredkzk]

In aider-desk case, pls confirm the right uv install command:
uv tool install aider-desk
(asking because the command in the aider documentation is different)

[wladimiiir]

Hi, AiderDesk is not a Python package, so it cannot be installed using uv. You will have to download the installation for your OS from the latest release.

[fredkzk]

Sorry, I misunderstood your "Startup with uv" section.