aide.sh
Your commander of agents.
aide turns any Claude Code project into an agent with one file. Multiple agents? One HQ to command them all.
Why aide?
The token problem: A frontier Claude Code session has a finite context window. Every subtask handled inline eats tokens. With 5 agents doing 50k tokens each, you burn 250k of context — most of it irrelevant to the next task.
aide's answer: Process isolation. aide dispatch runs work in separate claude -p processes. The frontier only sees a bounded summary. 50k tokens of work → ~500 tokens of output.
Quick taste
# Install
cargo install aide-sh
# Turn any project into an agent
cd ~/projects/code-reviewer
aide init
# ✓ Created Aidefile
# Run a task
aide run . "Review PR #42 and leave comments"
# ✓ Task completed (23,847 tokens used)
# Team mode: coordinate multiple agents
aide init --team
# ✓ Created crossmem-hq/
aide dispatch crossmem-rs "fix parser bug"
aide dispatch crossmem-web "update dashboard"
aide wait crossmem-rs#42
# ✓ Done (18,293 tokens)
What's an Aidefile?
[persona]
name = "Senior Reviewer"
style = "direct, cares about edge cases"
[budget]
tokens = "100k"
max_retries = 3
[trigger]
on = "issue"
[vault]
keys = ["GITHUB_TOKEN"]
[skills]
include = ["code-review"]
Drop this into any project. That's it — it's an agent now.
What aide handles
| Concern | Single agent | Team (HQ) |
|---|---|---|
| Budget | Token limits, auto-retry | Per-agent budgets |
| Vault | Encrypted secrets → env vars | HQ controls who gets what |
| Memory | Per-agent compaction | Centralized at HQ, agents stateless |
| Skills | Injected at spawn | Policy controls injection |
| Routing | — | Policy rules or frontier fallback |
| Telemetry | — | Token usage, success rate, events |
What aide does NOT do
aide doesn't replace Claude Code. Claude Code does all the thinking, coding, and reasoning. aide manages the lifecycle — who works on what, with what context, under what budget.
Aidefile is to Claude Code what Dockerfile is to Linux.
aide vs Claude Code native
| Feature | Claude Code (native) | aide (adds) |
|---|---|---|
| Run a task | claude -p "task" | aide run agent "task" — with budget + vault |
| Subagents | .claude/agents/*.md | aide dispatch — token-isolated processes |
| Memory | ~/.claude/projects/*/memory/ | HQ/memory/ — centralized SSOT |
| Secrets | env vars, manual | Vault — encrypted, gated by HQ |
| Routing | you decide | Policy — deterministic rules |
Next steps
- Installation — get the binary
- Quick Start — your first agent in 2 minutes
- Concepts — agents, Aidefiles, single vs team