edmundmiller/dotfiles/code-search

Code search tool selection

Choose by what you know and what must match:

• Behavior without known identifiers: use sgrep for semantic discovery.
• Exact names, literals, regexes, or non-code text: use scoped rg.
• Syntax shape, codemods, or structural policy: use ast-grep. Load its skill

for patterns, safe rewrites, rule tests, severity, and CI. Preview matches before rewriting; do not use text replacement for structural changes.

Use rg to shortlist files before a structural search when helpful. AST matching distinguishes syntax nodes from incidental text in comments or strings.

Semantic discovery with sgrep

Use Context.dev's sgrep when you know the behavior but not its identifiers. Scope the search to a likely directory and inspect the returned source before drawing conclusions. Rankings are approximate, not proof of behavior.

sgrep "retry failed requests with backoff" ./src -n 5 --json

When you already have useful patterns, rank only their matching passages. Run both commands from the same directory so ripgrep paths resolve correctly.

rg --json -C 3 'retry|backoff' ./src \
  | sgrep "retry failed requests with backoff" --stdin --json

Keep rg for exact names, literals, and regexes. Keep ast-grep for syntax and rewrites. If sgrep is unavailable, use scoped rg searches instead.

The first search downloads a 32–34 MB model and any required parsers. Source and queries stay local, but the local index caches source passages. After assets are cached, set HF_HUB_OFFLINE=1 to prevent further downloads. --no-cache disables index reads and writes, not model downloads. Do not bypass ignore rules to include secrets in a search.

Upstream: https://github.com/context-dot-dev/sgrep. Other projects also use the name sgrep; use the version packaged by these dotfiles.

ripgrep examples

# Show line numbers for a literal-looking call; this also matches comments.
rg -n 'console\.log\(' -t js
# Search selected file types.
rg 'TODO|FIXME' -t py -t js
# Show surrounding lines.
rg -C 3 'error' -t log
# Return filenames only.
rg -l 'import.*React' -g '*.tsx'