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Why Cline doesn't index your codebase

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Re: Why Cline doesn't index your codebase

#31

Post by theturtle32 »

spenczar5 wrote: post #5
coreyh14444 wrote: post #2

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

What does that mean? In what way does "search and feed" differ from "retrieve and augment?" Those are practically synonyms to me - is it about tool use vs prompt crafting?

Correct. RAG is a general term as you describe, but it has become inextricably linked with vector databases in the minds of a lot of people, to the extent that GP and even the blog post we're discussing use RAG specifically to mean the use of a vector database after chunking input to create embeddings.

I agree with you that RAG should be a generic term that is agnostic to the method of retrieval and augmentation. But at the moment, in a lot of people's minds, it specifically means using a vector database.

Re: Why Cline doesn't index your codebase

#32

Post by avereveard »

NitpickLawyer wrote: post #30

Eh... I'm not convinced. I like cline, I've been using it here and there and I think it found a good mix between "vibesus take the wheel" and "hey, I'm still here and I enjoy doing this". I was particularly surprised that it worked pretty well with local models. A lot of that is on the model (tested w/ devstral) but a lot of it is on the cradle (e.g. aider is great at what it does, but local model support is hit and…

at some point they will move from scanning files to scannign the AST and then token consumption will be greatly reduced by default, the challenge is that then you need something generic enough like tree-sitter to reduce the monumental effort of integrating a number of parsers.

Re: Why Cline doesn't index your codebase

#35

Post by noosphr »

esafak wrote: post #27
noosphr wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I build these systems for a living, and I just made a post about why code is different from natural text: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44107379 RAG is useful for natural text because there is no innate logic in how it's structured. RAG chunking based on punctuation for natural language doesn't work well because people use punctuation pretty poorly and the RAG models are too small to learn how they can do it t…

RAG does not just mean similarity search. It means retrieving all relevant content, including the AST dependencies. Whatever you would want to know if you were to answer the query yourself.

Than it must be able to search every book and paper ever written because when it comes to deciding if an algorithm is correct I need to read the original paper that defined it and any updates in the literature since then.

Since that rag system doesn't, and probably will never, exist we are stuck with vector embeddings as the common definition everyone working in the field uses and understands.

Re: Why Cline doesn't index your codebase

#36

Post by esafak »

noosphr wrote: post #35
esafak wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RAG does not just mean similarity search. It means retrieving all relevant content, including the AST dependencies. Whatever you would want to know if you were to answer the query yourself.

Than it must be able to search every book and paper ever written because when it comes to deciding if an algorithm is correct I need to read the original paper that defined it and any updates in the literature since then. Since that rag system doesn't, and probably will never, exist we are stuck with vector embeddings as the common definition everyone working in the field uses and understands.

If you were to do this by hand, would you search every book and paper ever written? That is not feasible so you have to make a trade-off.

For alternatives to vector search, see GraphRAG and AST parsing; e.g., https://vxrl.medium.com/enhancing-llm-code-generation-with-r... or https://github.com/sankalp1999/code_qa

Re: Why Cline doesn't index your codebase

#38

Post by bryanlarsen »

electroly wrote: post #29
bryanlarsen wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like you're the exception rather than the rule. I've never seen a project with tens of thousands of files worth of accurate documentation. Any project that has that much documentation the majority of it is outdated and/or wrong. Some of it is still useful, but only in a historical context. The code is the authoritative reference.

Sure, I'm a power user with a monster codebase, never said that I wasn't. RAG is a power user feature. The files are generated from external sources, pulling together as much information as I could collect. It's a script so I can keep it up to date. I think there is roughly no programmer out there who needs to be told that documentation needs to be up-to-date; this is obvious enough that I'm trying not to be offended…

By documentation I assumed you meant internal documentation, like on a company Wiki.

External documentation is presumably already in the LLM's training data, so it should be extraneous to pull it into context. Obviously there's a huge difference between "should be" and "is" otherwise you wouldn't be putting in the work to pull it into context.

Re: Why Cline doesn't index your codebase

#40

Post by ramoz »

I kept wondering why Cursor was indexing my codebase, it was never clear.

Anyway context to me enables a lot more assurance and guarantees. RAG never did.

My favorite workflow right now is:

  - Create context with https://github.com/backnotprop/prompt-tower
  - Feed it to Gemini
  - Gemini Plans
  - I pass the plan into my local PM framework
  - Claude Code picks it up and executes
  - repeat
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