Code Search

Finding things in a Workspace

Search before you read. Reading whole files to locate one symbol wastes context you will need later for the actual work.

Order of operations

1. list_dir /workspace first. Layout tells you where to look and stops you searching the whole tree.
2. glob when you know roughly what the file is called — *.config.*, *test*, *.md.
3. grep when you know what the code says rather than where it lives.
4. read_file last, and with offset/limit once grep has told you the line number.

Patterns that pay off

Find a definition rather than every mention:

grep -rn "function handlePayment" /workspace
grep -rn "class .*Repository" /workspace
grep -rn "export (const|function|class) name" /workspace

Find callers, then narrow:

grep -rn "handlePayment(" /workspace

Find configuration and constants:

grep -rni "timeout|retry|max_|limit" /workspace

Get the shape of a file cheaply before reading it:

grep -n "^(export |function |class |def |const )" /workspace/src/thing.ts

When a search returns too much

Do not read all of it. Narrow instead: add a directory, add context to the pattern, or count first with grep -rc pattern /workspace to see whether the search was even the right one.

Reporting

Answer with file paths and line numbers, not prose summaries of code the Operator can read. src/billing.ts:412 is more useful than three sentences describing what happens there.

Source & license

This open-source skill is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: 1aifanatic
• Source: 1aifanatic/super-computer
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.