Use sonnet by default; updated docs

website/_posts/2024-07-01-sonnet-not-lazy.md

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+---
+title: Sonnet is the opposite of lazy
+excerpt: Claude 3.5 Sonnet represents a step change in AI coding.
+#highlight_image: /assets/linting.jpg
+draft: true
+nav_exclude: true
+---
+{% if page.date %}
+<p class="post-date">{{ page.date | date: "%B %d, %Y" }}</p>
+{% endif %}
+
+
+# Sonnet is the opposite of lazy
+
+Claude 3.5 Sonnet represents a step change
+in AI coding.
+It is so industrious, diligent and hard working that
+it has caused multiple problems for aider.
+It's been worth the effort to adapt aider to work well
+with Sonnet,
+because the result is surprisingly powerful.
+
+Sonnet's amazing work ethic caused a few problems:
+
+1. Sonnet is capable of outputting a very large amount of correct,
+complete code in one response.
+So much that it can easily blow through the 4k output token limit
+on API responses, which truncates its coding in mid-stream.
+2. Similarly, Sonnet can specify large sequences of edits in one go, 
+like changing a majority of lines while refactoring a large file.
+Again, this regularly triggered the 4k output limit
+and resulted in a failed edits.
+3. Sonnet is not shy about quoting large chunks of an
+existing file to perform a SEARCH & REPLACE edit across
+a long span of lines.
+This can be wasteful and also trigger the 4k output limit.
+
+
+## Good problems
+
+Problems (1) and (2) are "good problems"
+in the sense that Sonnet is
+able to write more high quality code than any other model!
+
+Aider now allows Sonnet to return code in multiple 4k token
+responses.
+This gets all the upsides of Sonnet's prolific coding skills,
+without being constrained by the 4k output token limit.
+
+
+## Wasting tokens
+
+Problem (3) does cause some real downsides.
+
+Faced with a few small changes spread far apart in 
+a source file,
+Sonnet would often prefer to do one giant SEARCH/REPLACE
+operation of the ~entire file.
+This wastes a tremendous amount of tokens,
+time and money -- and risks hitting the 4k output limit.
+It would be far faster and less expensive to instead 
+do a few surgical edits.
+
+Aider now prompts Sonnet to discourage these long-winded
+SEARCH/REPLACE operations
+and promotes much more concise edits.
+
+
+## Aider with Sonnet
+
+[The latest release of aider](https://aider.chat/HISTORY.html#aider-v0410)
+has specialized support for Claude 3.5 Sonnet:
+
+- Aider allows Sonnet to produce as much code as it wants,
+by automatically and seamlessly spreading the response
+out over a sequence of 4k token API responses.
+- Aider carefully prompts Sonnet to be concise and
+return only changing sections of code.
+This reduces Sonnet's tendency to waste time, tokens and money
+returning large chunks of unchanging code.
+- Aider now uses `claude-3-5-sonnet-20240620` by default if `ANTHROPIC_API_KEY` is set in the environment.
+
+You can use aider with Sonnet like this:
+
+```
+pip install aider-chat
+
+export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=<key> # Mac/Linux
+setx   ANTHROPIC_API_KEY <key> # Windows
+
+aider
+```
+