This is cool, but I don't understand why it tries to re-implement (a subset of) grep. Not only that, but the grep-like behaviour is the default and I need to opt-in to the semantic search using the --sem flag. If I want grep I can use grep/ripgrep.
Show HN: Semantic grep with local embeddings
21–30 of 84 posts
Re: Show HN: Semantic grep with local embeddings
#22This looks very useful. Looks like you have to build an index. When should it be rebuilt? Any support for automatic rebuilds?
Yes- files are hashed and checked whenever you search so index should always remain up to date. Only changed files are reindexed. You can also inspect the metadata (chunking semantics, embeddings). It’s all in the .ck sidecar
Re: Show HN: Semantic grep with local embeddings
#23This is cool, but I don't understand why it tries to re-implement (a subset of) grep. Not only that, but the grep-like behaviour is the default and I need to opt-in to the semantic search using the --sem flag. If I want grep I can use grep/ripgrep.
Fair comment- the initial thinking was to have both and in fact a hybrid mode too which fuses results so you can get chunks that match both semantically and on keyword search in one resultset. Later could add a reranker too.
Re: Show HN: Semantic grep with local embeddings
#24At this point, we aren't even saying it's written in Rust anymore, we just mention it in the title whenever possible. I did look into the core features and I gotta say, that looked quite cool. It's like Google search, but for the codebase. What does it take to support other languages?
It supports most languages but needs a bit of tree-sitter setup to do semantic chunking. Let me know what languages you’d like added
I'd love to see elixir support.
Re: Show HN: Semantic grep with local embeddings
#25At this point, we aren't even saying it's written in Rust anymore, we just mention it in the title whenever possible. I did look into the core features and I gotta say, that looked quite cool. It's like Google search, but for the codebase. What does it take to support other languages?
It supports most languages but needs a bit of tree-sitter setup to do semantic chunking. Let me know what languages you’d like added
Clojure would be awesome
Re: Show HN: Semantic grep with local embeddings
#26[stub for offtopicness]
Why does it need to say RUST in the headline as if this was a feature, lol
Re: Show HN: Semantic grep with local embeddings
#27[stub for offtopicness]
What does this have to do with Claude Code?
Re: Show HN: Semantic grep with local embeddings
#28[stub for offtopicness]
What does this have to do with Claude Code?
Mainly I wrote it because I noticed Claude's "by design" use of grep meant it couldn't search the code base for things it didn't already know the name of, or find "the auth section". But equally, it's well documented that e.g. Cursor's old RAG technique wasn't that great.
My idea was to make a tool that just does a quick and simple embedding on each file, and uses that to provide a semantic alternative that is much closer to grep in nature, but allows an AI tool like Claude Code to run it from the command line - with some parameters.
Arguably could be MCP, but in my experience setting up a server for a basic tool like this is a whole lot of hassle.
I'm fairly confident that this is a useful tool for CC as it started using it while I was coding it, and even when buggy, was more than willing to work around the issues for the benefit of having semantic search!
Re: Show HN: Semantic grep with local embeddings
#29Re: Show HN: Semantic grep with local embeddings
#30At this point, we aren't even saying it's written in Rust anymore, we just mention it in the title whenever possible. I did look into the core features and I gotta say, that looked quite cool. It's like Google search, but for the codebase. What does it take to support other languages?
It supports most languages but needs a bit of tree-sitter setup to do semantic chunking. Let me know what languages you’d like added
Thanks for your quick response, most large codebases I've been fiddling on is Ruby!