I haven't yet tried incorporating tree-sitter as Aider does to load in all definitions in the repo. In Plandex, the idea is more to load in just the files are relevant to what you're building before giving a prompt. You can also load directory layouts (with file names only) with `plandex load some-dir --tree`.

I like the idea of something like `plandex load some-dir --defs` to load definitions with tree-sitter. I don't think I'd load the whole repo's defs by default like Aider does (I believe?), because that could potentially use a lot of tokens in a large repo and include a lot of irrelevant definitions. One of Plandex's goals is to give the user granular control over what's in context.

But for now if you wanted to do something where definitions across the whole repo would be helpful (vs. loading in specific files or directories) then Aider is better at that.

But.. it was said Plandex is similar or worthy of consideration next to something like Aider.. when this post is about Aider.

Understanding a codebase, along with the in/outs between the calls is pretty vital to any codebase, especially the larger a codebase gets.

I'm not attached to the way Aider or Plandex does anything, but I'm still not clear on which scenarios it's worth considering compared to Aider, or vice Versa. Aider seems pretty unique and stands alone on a number of things. I'll still install Plandex and try it out.

Without details, it's a little surprising a post like this could get upvoted so much.

Plandex isn't really focused on understanding a whole codebase. It can be used for that to some extent, but it's more designed for building larger features where you'd load in maybe 5-20 relevant files and then have Plandex build the whole feature across potentially dozens of steps and model calls. With Aider (or ChatGPT) it would require a lot more back-and-forth and user interaction to get a similar result.

Like I said, I think Aider's use of tree-sitter is a great concept and something I'd like to incorporate in some way. I'm not at all trying to claim that Plandex is 'better' than Aider for every use case. I think they are suited to different kinds of tasks.