Show HN: Is grep enough? A transparent benchmark for agentic code navigation

Category: devtools

Tags: benchmark, code-navigation, agent-tooling, ai-coding, tree-sitter, lsp, experiment

Score: 7.8/10 (Innovation: 7, Technical: 8, Documentation: 9, Utility: 7)

This project provides a rigorous, transparent benchmark comparing three code navigation regimes (plain text search, structural via tree-sitter, and semantic via LSP) for AI coding agents across 150 test cells involving 10 real-world codebases and varying task complexity. It's interesting because it debunks simplistic claims about grep's sufficiency, showing that while all methods achieve similar correctness, they separate dramatically in token efficiency and operational cost, especially at higher complexity levels.

Target audience: backend devs, AI/ML engineers, devops

Repository: https://entelligentsia.github.io/is-grep-enough/ · JavaScript

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