Aider

Aider reads the standard OpenAI environment variables, so it connects without a configuration file.

Setup

export OPENAI_API_KEY="UsePod"
export OPENAI_API_BASE="https://api.usepod.ai/proxy/<TOKEN>/v1"

aider --model gpt-5-4-mini

Replace <TOKEN> with the API token from your dashboard. Note that Aider uses OPENAI_API_BASE, not OPENAI_BASE_URL — the two names appear interchangeably across tools and are not.

Or pass everything as flags, which keeps a shared shell clean:

aider \
  --openai-api-key UsePod \
  --openai-api-base https://api.usepod.ai/proxy/<TOKEN>/v1 \
  --model gpt-5-4-mini

Verify

Aider prints the active model on startup; confirm it matches what you asked for, then send a one-line prompt. A reply means the proxy is carrying it.

Choosing a model

Aider’s editing formats ask a lot of a model — it expects diffs or whole files back in a specific shape, and weaker models fail that structure more often than they fail the reasoning. If edits are being rejected or malformed, try a stronger model before assuming the integration is at fault.

--model accepts any id from the marketplace.

Troubleshooting

Aider ignores the base URL. The variable is OPENAI_API_BASE. Setting OPENAI_BASE_URL does nothing here, which is a frequent cross-tool mix-up.

Repeated malformed-edit retries. A model-capability issue rather than a connection one; the requests are arriving and being billed.

402 mid-session. Aider sends the repository map plus conversation on each turn, so input tokens accumulate quickly on a large repo. Fund the token or narrow the files in scope.