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The AI-native knowledge base for Aider

Aider is the open-source AI pair programmer in your terminal. Hjarni is the knowledge base it reads across sessions, repos, and machines.

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What this unlocks

Workflows that actually use your context

Brief Aider once, not at the start of every session

Aider forgets everything between runs. Save the project's architecture, conventions, and gotchas as Hjarni notes once, and let Aider read them on demand from then on.

Resume the same fix the next day

End an Aider session with a Hjarni note: what you tried, what worked, what is left. Tomorrow's session reads that note and skips the dead ends.

Match the team's style without /add files

Stop /adding the same style guide and naming conventions into every chat. Put them in a Hjarni folder for the project. Aider searches and reads them when it needs them.

Share runbooks with humans and Aider in one place

Deploy steps, rollback procedures, env quirks. One Hjarni note that engineers read in the browser and Aider reads from the terminal. Same source of truth.

Read first, write when your Aider version supports it

Reads work today via Hjarni search. Writes (saving a debugging note back) depend on whether your Aider build surfaces MCP write tools, which is still moving. Treat read-side context as the durable win and write-back as a nice-to-have.

Setup

Connect Aider in about two minutes

  1. 1

    Install Aider (pipx install aider-chat) and sign up for Hjarni. Aider's MCP support is evolving; run aider --help and grep for mcp to confirm which flag your build accepts before relying on this flow.

  2. 2

    Make sure Node is on PATH so npx can fetch mcp-remote. The bridge converts Hjarni's remote HTTP endpoint into the stdio shape CLI tools expect, and handles OAuth in the browser on first launch.

  3. 3

    Run the command above in your project directory. mcp-remote opens a browser tab for the Hjarni OAuth flow the first time.

  4. 4

    Ask Aider to list your Hjarni notes. If they appear in the response, the MCP connection is live.

  5. 5

    To make it permanent, set the same option in your .aider.conf.yml (the key name follows the flag) or alias the command in your shell.

Wire Aider to Hjarni through the mcp-remote bridge (flag name varies by version)

aider --mcp-server "npx -y mcp-remote https://hjarni.com/mcp"

The Hjarni MCP endpoint is https://hjarni.com/mcp. The connection uses OAuth, so you sign in with your Hjarni account when prompted. No API key files to manage.

Why a CLI pair programmer benefits from an MCP knowledge base

Aider is built around the diff: read code, propose changes, commit. That loop is excellent, but it leaves context out. The reasoning behind a past decision, the runbook for a tricky migration, the customer feedback that drove a requirement — none of that lives in the diff. Hjarni gives Aider somewhere to read it from.

Aider's repo map and /add already handle in-repo files well. Hjarni's role is the cross-project layer: ADRs, conventions you reuse across services, incident notes, and the lessons you would otherwise re-explain. The two stack: repo for code, Hjarni for context.

Open source matters here too. Aider is Apache-licensed and your model is yours to pick. Hjarni stores plain Markdown notes you can export anytime. If you switch CLIs, models, or hosts, the notes keep working.

Common questions

Questions before you connect Aider

Does Aider support MCP servers?

Aider's MCP support is evolving. The --mcp-server CLI flag is the most widely supported path today and accepts a command string that Aider spawns as an MCP server. Use mcp-remote inside that command to bridge Hjarni's HTTP endpoint. Confirm with aider --help on your version before relying on it.

How is the mcp-remote bridge different from native MCP?

Hjarni's MCP endpoint is HTTP. mcp-remote is a small npm package that exposes a remote HTTP MCP server as a local stdio server, which is the shape CLI tools like Aider expect. It also handles the OAuth flow in the browser on first use.

Why pair Aider with Hjarni instead of /add'ing files?

/add is the right tool for files already in the repo. Hjarni is the right place for the context that does not belong in the repo: ADRs, customer interviews, deploy runbooks, and cross-project conventions. Aider reads both.

Does this work with --auto-lint and --auto-test?

Yes. The MCP connection is orthogonal to Aider's edit-and-test loop. Aider can search Hjarni for the relevant convention notes during a chat regardless of which lint or test commands you have configured.

Will Aider create Hjarni notes on its own?

Only when you ask, and only on versions that expose write-side MCP tool calls. Hjarni's MCP server has create and update tools, but whether Aider surfaces them depends on the Aider release. Treat write-back as a nice-to-have, not a guarantee.

Give Aider a memory

The session starts where the last one ended. Write notes once. Aider reads them across every conversation.

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Write once. You both remember.

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Give your AI a memory

Works with Claude and ChatGPT today. Gemini coming soon.