codeium.el
This plugin implements “support” for codeium, it’s supposed to be officially maintained, but the features are lacking.
As of writing this the only feature is code completion, no code actions or chat.
Issue #119 in their repo explains the problem with the plugin in more detail.
Something that annoys me specially is the lack of a mode to activate/deactivate it, it’s either on all the time or started with a hook.
Regardless, this is pretty easy to set up with straight.el and is free of charge.
aider.el
The aider.el package offers an simple UI to communicate with Aider in Emacs.
Aider allows you to use many models, with OpenRouter there are even a couple of free models to use, just need to create an account and provide the API key.
The configuration is pretty straight forward:
(use-package aider
:straight (:host github :repo "tninja/aider.el" :files ("aider.el"))
:config
;; For claude-3-5-sonnet
;; (setq aider-args '("--model" "anthropic/claude-3-5-sonnet-20241022"))
;; (setenv "ANTHROPIC_API_KEY" anthropic-api-key)
;; Or chatgpt model
;; (setq aider-args '("--model" "o3-mini"))
;; (setenv "OPENAI_API_KEY" <your-openai-api-key>)
;; Or use your personal config file
(setq aider-args `("--config" ,(expand-file-name "~/.aider.conf.yml")))
;; ;;
;; Optional: Set a key binding for the transient menu
(global-set-key (kbd "C-c a") 'aider-transient-menu))I opted to just add the config file, since it’s the most versatile
aider-transient-menu will open a nice many with a bunch of option for communicating with the AI.
I found the explain function at C-c a e pretty useful for understanding foreign codebases.
Syntax highlighting in the aider buffer is not great at the moment, but it something that they seem to be actively working on.
A downside in my opinion is the littering you get in your different repos, it creates a history file and cache in each one. It prompts you to add them to the .gitignore, which makes it a bit more tolerable.
copilot.el
This is probably the best current package for inline code completion in emacs, it’s not official from Microsoft, but it should provide a similar experience to the Nvim plugin which they support.
The downside is that you’ll need a Copilot license.
Set up is also fairly simple:
(use-package copilot
:straight (:host github :repo "copilot-emacs/copilot.el" :files ("*.el"))
:ensure t
:bind (:map copilot-completion-map
("<tab>" . copilot-accept-completion)
("TAB" . copilot-accept-completion))
)Then install the copilot server with copilot-install-server
And login to Copilot with copilot-login. You can also check the status with copilot-diagnose (NotAuthorized means you don’t have a valid subscription).
copilot-chat.el
To add the missing features from copilot.el other than the completion, we got this other package.
It’s features are somewhat similar to the aider.el, but doesn’t have insert capabilities.
It also has a transient menu with copilot-chat-transient which is very nice.
It provides a couple of frontends for syntax highlighting which is a bit nicer than the aider solution.
shell-maker seems to be the more user friendly option, but whit org-mode you can also eval regions, and it’s easier to integrate with my note taking workflow.
Of course you’ll need a copilot license for this too, and it will use the microsoft models.
Installation is also fairly simple:
(use-package copilot-chat
:straight (:host github :repo "chep/copilot-chat.el" :files ("*.el"))
:ensure t
:config
(setq copilot-chat-frontend 'org)
:after (request org markdown-mode))Compilation takes a bit of time, so don’t panic
ellama
This seems to be a more general solution for AI use, but it also add some code specific features.
The configuration is a bit more complex, but it’s well explained in their GitHub.
I can’t comment on it since I haven’t tried it extensively, but it’s probably the best option if you self-host some AI model.