Document new model support

docs/connect.md

@@ -0,0 +1,121 @@
+
+# Connecting aider to LLMs
+
+Aider works well with OpenAI's GPT 3.5, GPT-4, GPT-4 Turbo with Vision and
+Anthropic's Claude 3 Opus and Sonnet.
+
+Aider also has support for connecting to almost any LLM, but may not be as effective
+because of the reduced capabilities of such alternative models.
+For comparison, GPT-3.5 is just barely capable of *editing code* to provide aider's
+interactive "pair programming" style workflow.
+So models that are less capable than GPT-3.5 may struggle to perform well with aider.
+
+## OpenAI
+
+To work with OpenAI's models, you need to provide your
+[OpenAI API key](https://help.openai.com/en/articles/4936850-where-do-i-find-my-secret-api-key)
+either in the `OPENAI_API_KEY` environment variable or
+via the `--openai-api-key` command line switch.
+
+Aider has some built in shortcuts for the most popular OpenAI models and
+has been tested and benchmarked to work well with them:
+
+- OpenAI's GPT-4 Turbo: `aider` with no args uses GPT-4 Turbo by default.
+- OpenAI's GPT-4 Turbo with Vision: `aider --4turbo` will use this vision capable model, allowing you to share images with GPT by adding them to the chat with `/add` or by naming them on the command line.
+- OpenAI's GPT-3.5 Turbo: `aider --35turbo`
+
+You can use `aider --model <model-name>` to use any other OpenAI model.
+
+## Anthropic
+
+To work with Anthropic's models, you need to provide your
+[Anthropic API key](https://docs.anthropic.com/claude/reference/getting-started-with-the-api)
+either in the `ANTHROPIC_API_KEY` environment variable or
+via the `--anthropic-api-key` command line switch.
+
+Aider has some built in shortcuts for the most popular Anthropic models and
+has been tested and benchmarked to work well with them:
+
+- Anthropic's Claude 3 Opus: `aider --opus`
+- Anthropic's Claude 3 Sonnet: `aider --sonnet`
+
+You can use `aider --model <model-name>` to use any other Anthropic model.
+
+## Azure
+
+Aider can be configured to connect to the OpenAI models on Azure.
+You can run aider with the following arguments to connect to Azure:
+
+```
+$ aider \
+    --openai-api-type azure \
+    --openai-api-key your-key-goes-here \
+    --openai-api-base https://example-endpoint.openai.azure.com \
+    --openai-api-version 2023-05-15 \
+    --openai-api-deployment-id deployment-name \
+    ...
+```
+
+You could also store those values in an `.aider.conf.yml` file in your home directory:
+
+```
+openai-api-type: azure
+openai-api-key: your-key-goes-here
+openai-api-base: https://example-endpoint.openai.azure.com
+openai-api-version: 2023-05-15
+openai-api-deployment-id: deployment-name
+```
+
+Or you can populate the following environment variables instead:
+
+```
+OPENAI_API_TYPE=azure
+OPENAI_API_KEY=your-key-goes-here
+OPENAI_API_BASE=https://example-endpoint.openai.azure.com
+OPENAI_API_VERSION=2023-05-15
+OPENAI_API_DEPLOYMENT_ID=deployment-name
+```
+
+See the
+[official Azure documentation on using OpenAI models](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/cognitive-services/openai/chatgpt-quickstart?tabs=command-line&pivots=programming-language-python)
+for more information on how to populate the above configuration values.
+
+## OpenAI compatible APIs
+
+If you can make an LLM accessible via an OpenAI compatible API,
+you can use `--openai-api-base` to connect to a different API endpoint.
+
+## Other LLMs
+
+Aider uses the [litellm](https://docs.litellm.ai/docs/providers) package
+to provide connections to hundreds of other models.
+You can use `aider --model <provider-name>/<model-name>` to use any supported model.
+
+Depending on which model you access, you may need to provide an API key
+or other configuration parameters by setting certain environment variables.
+If any required variables are not set, aider will print a brief
+error message listing which parameters are needed.
+
+To explore the list of supported models you can run `aider --model <name>`.
+If it's not an exact match for a model, aider will
+return a list of possible matching models.
+For example `aider --model 3.5` will return the following list of models:
+
+- gpt-3.5-turbo
+- gpt-3.5-turbo-0301
+- gpt-3.5-turbo-0613
+- gpt-3.5-turbo-1106
+- gpt-3.5-turbo-0125
+- gpt-3.5-turbo-16k
+- gpt-3.5-turbo-16k-0613
+- ft:gpt-3.5-turbo
+- azure/gpt-3.5-turbo-instruct-0914
+- gpt-3.5-turbo-instruct
+- gpt-3.5-turbo-instruct-0914
+- openrouter/openai/gpt-3.5-turbo
+- openrouter/openai/gpt-3.5-turbo-16k
+- deepinfra/openchat/openchat_3.5
+
+Or, see the [list of providers supported by litellm](https://docs.litellm.ai/docs/providers)
+for more details.
+