Would this replace something like codebase-memory-mcp[1] or improve when both is being used?
Show HN: Semble – Code search for agents that uses 98% fewer tokens than grep
31–40 of 187 posts
Re: Show HN: Semble – Code search for agents that uses 98% fewer tokens than grep
#32This looks great! I built a tool in the same space- and I found that the biggest challenge was often to get the agent to prefer to use the tool over bash tools. What’s your experience with that?
Re: Show HN: Semble – Code search for agents that uses 98% fewer tokens than grep
#33I also like the index feature form https://maki.sh
Source code has a lot of structure, using a real parser instead of grepping and reading files can potentially save a lot of tokens
Re: Show HN: Semble – Code search for agents that uses 98% fewer tokens than grep
#34very curious to give it a spin but why write a cli in python? would surely be faster and more portable with go or rust?
Perhaps Python is their main language (they seem to be ML peeps, which would make that most likely), which means it's easier for them to do manual reviews even if they're using AI for implementing, etc.
Re: Show HN: Semble – Code search for agents that uses 98% fewer tokens than grep
#35This looks great! I built a tool in the same space- and I found that the biggest challenge was often to get the agent to prefer to use the tool over bash tools. What’s your experience with that?
Setup hooks. Hooks are how your harness forces compliance with your own rules.
Re: Show HN: Semble – Code search for agents that uses 98% fewer tokens than grep
#36I'd be interested in seeing actual agent benchmarks (eg CC or Copilot CLI with grep removed and this tool instead). For example, I have explored RTK and various LSP implementations and find that the models are so heavily RL'd with grep that they do not trust results in other forms and will continually retry or reread, and all token savings are lost because the model does not trust the results of the other tools.
I just put something in my global CLAUDE.md (under ~/.Claude) asking it to use the LSP instead of grep and have never had this issue since.
can you share that prompt?
Re: Show HN: Semble – Code search for agents that uses 98% fewer tokens than grep
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Codex CLI is quite happy running RTK. Well with GPT 5.5 xhigh anyway One thing that irks me is that when it doesn't support eg. a cli flag of find, it gives an error message rather than sending the full output of the command instead. Then the agent wastes tokens retrying, or worse, doesn't even try because the prompting may make them afraid to not run commands without rtk
how effective is RTK for you? worth using?
Wondering too
Re: Show HN: Semble – Code search for agents that uses 98% fewer tokens than grep
#38Very useful thanks for sharing!
Re: Show HN: Semble – Code search for agents that uses 98% fewer tokens than grep
#39Better than grep obviously, but how does this compare to existing LSPs?
Or tools like `ck`: https://beaconbay.github.io/ck/
Re: Show HN: Semble – Code search for agents that uses 98% fewer tokens than grep
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Codex CLI is quite happy running RTK. Well with GPT 5.5 xhigh anyway One thing that irks me is that when it doesn't support eg. a cli flag of find, it gives an error message rather than sending the full output of the command instead. Then the agent wastes tokens retrying, or worse, doesn't even try because the prompting may make them afraid to not run commands without rtk
how effective is RTK for you? worth using?
[deleted]