Use CodeGate with aider

Aider is an open source AI coding assistant that lets you pair program with LLMs in your terminal.

CodeGate works with the following AI model providers through aider:

• Local / self-managed:
  • Ollama
• Hosted:
  • OpenAI and OpenAI-compatible APIs

You can also configure CodeGate muxing to select your provider and model using workspaces.

note

This guide assumes you have already installed aider using their installation instructions.

Configure aider to use CodeGate

To configure aider to send requests through CodeGate:

CodeGate muxing

First, configure your provider(s) and select a model for each of your workspace(s) in the CodeGate dashboard.

Run aider with the OpenAI base URL set to http://localhost:8989/v1/mux. You can do this with the OPENAI_API_BASE environment variable or on the command line as shown below.

The --openai-api-key parameter is required but the value is not used. The --model setting must start with openai/ but the actual model is determined by your CodeGate workspace.

aider --openai-api-base http://localhost:8989/v1/mux --openai-api-key fake-value-not-used --model openai/fake-value-not-used

Ollama

You need Ollama installed on your local system with the server running (ollama serve) to use this provider.

CodeGate connects to http://host.docker.internal:11434 by default. If you changed the default Ollama server port or to connect to a remote Ollama instance, launch CodeGate with the CODEGATE_OLLAMA_URL environment variable set to the correct URL. See Configure CodeGate.

Before you run aider, set the Ollama base URL to CodeGate's API port using an environment variable. Alternately, use one of aider's other supported configuration methods to set the corresponding values.

macOS / Linux

export OLLAMA_API_BASE=http://localhost:8989/ollama

note

To persist this setting, add it to your shell profile (e.g., ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc) or use one of's aider's other supported configuration methods.

Windows

setx OLLAMA_API_BASE http://localhost:8989/ollama

note

Restart your shell after running setx.

Then run aider:

aider --model ollama_chat/<MODEL_NAME>

Replace <MODEL_NAME> with the name of a coding model you have installed locally using ollama pull.

We recommend the Qwen2.5-Coder series of models. Our minimum recommendation for quality results is the 7 billion parameter (7B) version, qwen2.5-coder:7b-instruct. This model balances performance and quality for systems with at least 4 CPU cores and 16GB of RAM. If you have more compute resources available, our experimentation shows that larger models do yield better results.

For more information, see the aider docs for connecting to Ollama.

OpenAI

You need an OpenAI API account to use this provider. To use a different OpenAI-compatible endpoint, set the CODEGATE_OPENAI_URL configuration parameter.

Before you run aider, set environment variables for your API key and to set the API base URL to CodeGate's API port. Alternately, use one of aider's other supported configuration methods to set the corresponding values.

macOS / Linux

export OPENAI_API_KEY=<YOUR_API_KEY>
export OPENAI_API_BASE=http://localhost:8989/openai

note

To persist these variables, add them to your shell profile (e.g., ~/.bashrc or ~/.zshrc).

Windows

setx OPENAI_API_KEY <YOUR_API_KEY>
setx OPENAI_API_BASE http://localhost:8989/openai

note

Restart your shell after running setx.

Replace <YOUR_API_KEY> with your OpenAI API key.

Then run aider as normal. For more information, see the aider docs for connecting to OpenAI.

Verify configuration

To verify that you've successfully connected aider to CodeGate, type /ask codegate version into the aider chat in your terminal. You should receive a response like "CodeGate version 0.1.13".

Next steps

Learn more about CodeGate's features:

• Access the dashboard
• CodeGate features

Remove CodeGate

If you decide to stop using CodeGate, follow these steps to remove it and revert your environment.

1. Quit aider and unset the environment variables you set during the configuration process:

   OpenAI: unset OPENAI_API_BASE (macOS/Linux) or setx OPENAI_API_BASE "" (Windows)

   Ollama: unset OLLAMA_API_BASE (macOS/Linux) or setx OLLAMA_API_BASE "" (Windows)

2. Stop and remove the CodeGate container:

   docker rm -f codegate

3. If you launched CodeGate with a persistent volume, delete it to remove the CodeGate database and other files:

   docker volume rm codegate_volume