ChunkHound
Shares rank 11 of 15 code search tools by recommenders
Free open-source code research tool that people run alongside Claude to explore large repos. Critics say the docs are confusing and the default embeddings use a hosted API.
Free open-source code research tool that people run alongside Claude to explore large repos. Critics say the docs are confusing and the default embeddings use a hosted API.
10 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 6
- criticize it
- 4
- approval share
- 60%
Recommended in 3 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 6 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 1.5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 3 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, not met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Local LLM setup fails or needs manual steps
“I followed the docs for ollama configuration, but it says unknown LLM provider when I try running the research command.”
Comment from 20 Jan 2026 in “Show HN: ChunkHound, a local-first tool for understanding large codebases” “It would be convenient if it could load local SLMs itself, otherwise I'll have to manually start the LLM server”
Comment from 18 Jan 2026 in “Show HN: ChunkHound, a local-first tool for understanding large codebases”
Other code search tools people recommend
The four most recommended other code search tools, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ripgrep | 122 | 18 | 87% | 12 | — | Approved |
| ast-grep | 21 | 3 | 88% | 9 | — | Approved |
| Semble | 20 | 7 | 74% | 4 | — | Approved |
| Graft (Claude Code hooks) | 13 | 4 | 76% | 4 | — | Approved |
| ChunkHoundThis page | 6 | 4 | 60% | 3 | — | — |
What people said
All 10 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“chunkhound doesn’t work well with worktrees”
“if i look at https://chunkhound.github.io it makes me think entire is a version of that”
“open-source tools I wrote like Chunk Hound (code research)”
“The ChunkHound docs are a bit confusing for making it available as an MCP server”
“I followed the docs for ollama configuration, but it says unknown LLM provider when I try running the research command.”
“It would be convenient if it could load local SLMs itself, otherwise I'll have to manually start the LLM server”
“Telling Claude to call the CLI tool is more efficient.”
“Will try this out. Kudos.”
“claude never uses it. Ever. Never once.”
“you say "local-first" but have placed voyage API for embeddings as the default”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.