Aider is quite configurable, you need to look at the leaderboard and copy one of the high performing model/config setups. Additionally, you need to autoload files such as the readme and coding guidelines for your project.
Aider's killer features are integration of automated lint/typecheck/test and fix loops with git checkpointing. If you're not setting up these features you aren't getting the full value proposition from it.
Never used the tool. But it seems both aider and cursor are not at their strongest out of the box? I read similar thing about cursor and doing custom configuration so it picks up coding guidelines etc etc. Is there some kind of agreed best practice standard that is documented or just try and error best practices from users sharing these?
Aider's leaderboard is a baseline "best practice" for model/edit format/mode selection. Beyond that, it's basically whatever you think are best practices in engineering and code style, which you should capture in documents that can serve double duty both for AI and for human contributors. Given that a lot of this stuff is highly contentious it's really up to you as to pick and choose what you prefer.
Aider's killer features are integration of automated lint/typecheck/test and fix loops with git checkpointing. If you're not setting up these features you aren't getting the full value proposition from it.