edit

The --edit invokes your designated text editor to either create a new prompt text file or to edit an existing prompt text file.

This option depends upon the system environment variable $EDITOR which defines the path to you preferred text editor.

When you do:

aia xyzzy

... and there is no file xyzzy.txt in your designated prompts directory, AND there are no other prompt text files that contain the phrase "xyzzy" or if --fuzzy options is used any prompts that are approximate to "xyzzy" THEN aia will issue an error message saying it could not find the desired prompt.

However, when you do

aia xyzzy --edit

the aia program will launch your editor passing in the path to a new prompt file $AIA_PROMPTS_DIR/xyzzy.txt

Use your $EDITOR to enter the content of this new prompt text file; save it; and, then exit the $EDITOR. aia will then continue its job using the newly created prompt text file.

The same process happens if the prompt text file already exists. The only difference is that your $EDITOR is presented with an existing file's content for your update. Like before when you are finished updating the existing prompt text file save it; quit the $EDITOR; and, aia will continue to process the newly updated prompt text file.