Feature Proposal: Batch File Refactoring with /add-dir and /batch

[robinson-carusoe]

Feature Proposal: Batch File Refactoring with /add-dir and /batch

I work with a ton of legacy code. When upgrading the code, there are times that I need to apply the same prompt to hundreds of files to bring them up to date. Adding all the files to the context is impossible. Adding each individual file (or a group of them) is tedious.

I just wrote a proof of concept and ran it against one of my repositories. It works like this:

/read-only some-file-with-specific-instructions.md
/add-dir my/dir-with-lots-of-files

/batch make some change that is the same in every one of these files.

Aider then:

• Stores the prompt in memory
• Iterates over the list of files collected by /add-dir
• For each file:
  • Adds the file to the chat context (along with any read-only files)
  • Sends the prompt as a user message to the LLM
  • Waits for the assistant's response
  • Commits the changes
  • Forgets the file from the chat context
  • Resets chat memory to keep context clean per file
• After all files, clears the queue and prints a summary of results

I run into this problem often, and my initial code worked great on a list of about 80 classes that were using an old framework syntax and all needed to be upgraded to the new syntax.

Is there any interest in seeing a pull request to have this feature in the core?

Command Summary

/add-dir {dir_name} {dir_name}        # Add one or more directories
/drop-dir {dir_name} {dir_name}       # Drop all or some directories from the chat
/ls-dir                               # List the directories in the chat
/ls-dir {dir_name}                    # List the files found in the directory in the chat if present
/batch {prompt}                       # Apply the prompt with a clean context to each file

[robinson-carusoe]

I guess a similar thing could accomplished with scripting, but I should did like using my new /batch command and watching it go to work.