Installation
Aider Vision Core documents a fork of Aider used by Aider Vision. Most pages describe the shared engine. Product support: Vision site. Community and praise: aider.chat.
Quick start
Install the engine package, then run the CLI or HTTP server.
python -m pip install -U aider-vision-core
# Change directory into your git workspace
cd /path/to/your/project
# CLI
aider-vision-core --model sonnet --api-key anthropic=<key>
# Or headless HTTP API (from repo root)
aider-vision-core-serve --workspace /path/to/your/project
For the Aider Vision desktop app, use aider-vision.digitaldefiance.org — it talks to this engine over HTTP.
Optional: optional install steps. Usage details for the shared engine: Usage and upstream usage.
The upstream aider.chat install.sh flow installs Aider, not this package — use pip install aider-vision-core for Vision Core.
One-liners
These one-liners will install aider, along with python 3.12 if needed. They are based on the uv installers.
Mac & Linux
Use curl to download the script and execute it with sh:
curl -LsSf https://aider.chat/install.sh | sh
If your system doesn’t have curl, you can use wget:
wget -qO- https://aider.chat/install.sh | sh
Windows
powershell -ExecutionPolicy ByPass -c "irm https://aider.chat/install.ps1 | iex"
Install with uv
You can install aider with uv:
python -m pip install uv # If you need to install uv
uv tool install --force --python python3.12 --with pip aider-vision-core@latest
This will install uv using your existing python version 3.8-3.13, and use it to install aider. If needed, uv will automatically install a separate python 3.12 to use with aider.
Also see the docs on other methods for installing uv itself.
Install with pipx
You can install aider with pipx:
python -m pip install pipx # If you need to install pipx
pipx install aider-vision-core
You can use pipx to install aider with python versions 3.9-3.12.
Also see the docs on other methods for installing pipx itself.
Other install methods
You can install aider with the methods described below, but one of the above methods is usually safer.
Install with pip
If you install with pip, you should consider using a virtual environment to keep aider’s dependencies separated.
You can use pip to install aider with python versions 3.9-3.12.
python -m pip install -U --upgrade-strategy only-if-needed aider-vision-core
In some environments you may get “aider command not found” errors.
You can try python -m aider_vision_core or
see here for more info.
Installing with package managers
It’s best to install aider using one of methods recommended above. While aider is available in a number of system package managers, they often install aider with incorrect dependencies.
Next steps…
There are some optional install steps you could consider. See the usage instructions to start coding with aider.