Hey everyone, been using Aider for a few sprints now and it's been a game-changer for prototyping. But I just hit a real snag and I'm hoping you can help me navigate it.
I'm working in a team with a standard git flow: main, develop, feature branches. I use Aider mostly on feature branches, and it's brilliant. The problem is when I need to make a small, targeted fix on a stable branch (like a hotfix on `main` or a patch on a release branch). I'll ask Aider to, say, "fix the null exception in the login validation," and it *will*, but it often also "refactors" adjacent code or updates unrelated import statements to "modern standards." This has introduced new bugs into code that was previously stable and tested.
It feels like Aider is optimized for greenfield development on a single branch, not for surgical edits in a deployed codebase. I'm worried about using it for production fixes now.
Has anyone figured out a workflow or prompt strategy to lock it down? Are there specific `.aider.conf` settings or git pre-commit hooks you use to make it more conservative? I'm thinking about things like:
* Can we instruct it to only edit the specific file/function in question?
* Is there a way to feed it the git diff context so it understands what's "in scope"?
* Do you combine it with a stricter review tool for stable branches?
I love the tool, but I need to trust it not to break things we're not trying to change 😅. What's your approach?