Why Cline doesn't index your codebase

Yep. Have definitely been replacing RAG solutions with search+feed the context window instead lately as well.

Terrible stuff and a reddish flag. First of all, gpt signs all over the blog post, reads like a bottom of the barrel linkedin post.

But more importantly, why double and triple down on no RAG? As with most techniques, it has its merits in certain scenarios. I understand getting VC money so you have to prove differentiation and conviction in your approach, but why do it like this? What if RAG does end up being useful? You'll just have to admit you were wrong and cursor and others were right? I don't get it.

Just say we don't believe RAG is as useful for now and we take a different approach. But tripling down on a technique so early into such a new field seems immature to me. It screams of wanting to look different for the sake of it.

Warning: I don't know what this post does in the background but it definitely slows down Firefox 138 to the point that it is barely usable

I'm not convinced--codebase indexing is still a killer feature in Cursor. I have tens of thousands of reference files stashed in the project directory to be indexed so that any time the model reaches out to the codebase search tool with a question, it finds a file with the answer. Lots of it is not code and has no AST representation; it's documentation. Without codebase indexing, it may entirely miss the context.

1. This argument seems flawed. Codebase search gives it a "foot in the door"; from that point it can read the rest of the file to get the remaining context. This is what Cursor does. It's the benefit of the agentic loop; no single tool call needs to provide the whole picture.

2. This argument is "because it's hard we shouldn't do it". Cursor does it. Just update the index when the code changes. Come on.

3. This argument is also "because it's hard we shouldn't do it". Cursor does it. The embeddings go in the cloud and the code is local. Enforced Privacy Mode exists. You can just actually implement these features rather than throwing your hands up and saying it's too hard.

This honestly makes me think less of Cline. They're wrong about this and it seems like they're trying to do damage control because they're missing a major feature.

Cline is, hands down, the most effective agentic coding tool out there. I've extensively daily driven any one of them you can name, and there's nothing even close. The reality is that no one knows how any of this stuff should work, and RAG is just a term that was made up a few years ago; it has no strict formal definition. There's a long way to go before anyone knows what the correct way to do things should be, but they are clearly on the right path from direct experience.