Feature Request: Move .aider* files into an .aider directory

[ziemkowski]

Issue

It would be nice if there were fewer top-level files/directories while using Aider. Would you consider moving the files Aider uses into a directory? For example...

.aider/
    chat.history.md
    conf.yml
    ignore.txt
    input.history
    tags.cache.v3

I imagine you'd still want to support looking for both .aider.conf.yml and .aider/conf.yml automatically though.

---

Version and model info

Aider v0.71.1
Main model: o1-preview with architect edit format
Editor model: gpt-4o with editor-diff edit format
Weak model: gpt-4o-mini
Git repo: .git with 6,644 files
Warning: For large repos, consider using --subtree-only and .aiderignore
See: https://aider.chat/docs/faq.html#can-i-use-aider-in-a-large-mono-repo
Repo-map: using 4096 tokens, auto refresh

[traits]

In part you can do this yet, compare #2325.

[vchepeli]

Also would be good if name is configurable for .aider folder, or location

[yzx9]

An additional benefit of moving to a single directory is that we can easily ignore all Aider-specific files by adding a .aider/.gitignore file like this:

*

This file can be generated automatically, avoiding the need to add new entries to the project's existing .gitignore file. This is especially useful when working with projects where you don’t have permission to modify the .gitignore file.

uv also use this trick to ignore .venv

When working on a project with uv, uv will create a virtual environment as needed. While some uv
commands will create a temporary environment (e.g., uv run --isolated), uv also manages a
persistent environment with the project and its dependencies in a .venv directory next to the
pyproject.toml. It is stored inside the project to make it easy for editors to find — they need
the environment to give code completions and type hints. It is not recommended to include the
.venv directory in version control; it is automatically excluded from git with an internal
.gitignore file.