ag (The Silver Searcher)

What hackers pick instead

• ripgrepA much faster grep replacement for searching codebases, also widely used by AI coding agents; the main caveat is its default skipping of gitignored and hidden files.122recommend
• ast-grepA syntax-aware command-line tool for searching and refactoring code without regex headaches, which people also expose to AI agents as a skill. Some report mixed results.21recommend
• SembleDevelopers recommend Semble for fast local code search that needs fewer tokens and queries than grep. Critics question how the token savings are measured.20recommend
• Graft (Claude Code hooks)People recommend it for giving coding agents a map of the code that searches inside files rather than by names, cutting tokens and latency. Critics say the benchmarks are thin and the README reads as generated.13recommend
• Lat.mdRecommended as a Markdown knowledge graph that helps AI agents search code faster than grep. Main caveat: critics want proof of better performance.11recommend

Every quote

The 5 most detailed of 6 comments. Each links to the original.

1. its file filtering using -g is so much more cumbersome than -G in ag

   Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “Small programming tricks”

2. ag is also a little more ergonomic with its default flex casing

   Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “Small programming tricks”

3. His 6086-character grep-like utility, "ag", from 1993 is all-time favorite

   Recommends · Oct 2026 · in “NetBSD adds a new text editor called atto”

4. Ag, grep beat IDE searches any day

   Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Threat Actors Expand Abuse of Microsoft Visual Studio Code”

5. they are both faster than GNU/Grep

   Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “Show HN: GNU Grep as a PHP Extension”