Exhaustive multi-strategy codebase search using grep, ripgrep, find, and AST-aware tracing to locate implementations, references, dependencies, and usage patterns for a given symbol, pattern, or concept. Use when you need to find every occurrence of a function, type, config key, or concept across a project — especially when simple text search misses indirect references, re-exports, or dynamic usage.
Exhaustive multi-strategy codebase search using grep, ripgrep, find, and AST-aware tracing to locate implementations, references, dependencies, and usage patterns for a given symbol, pattern, or concept. Use when you need to find every occurrence of a function, type, config key, or concept across a project — especially when simple text search misses indirect references, re-exports, or dynamic usage.
Exhaustive multi-strategy codebase search using grep, ripgrep, find, and AST-aware tracing to locate implementations, references, dependencies, and usage patterns for a given symbol, pattern, or concept. Use when you need to find every occurrence of a function, type, config key, or concept across a project — especially when simple text search misses indirect references, re-exports, or dynamic usage.
Deep Search
Objective
Perform an exhaustive, multi-pass search of the codebase for the specified query, pattern, or concept. Go beyond naive text matching by combining literal search, regex patterns, structural analysis, and dependency tracing to produce a complete map of where and how the target appears.
Phase 1 — Literal and Regex Search
Start broad. Run parallel searches to catch exact matches, variations, and related terms.
Exact identifier search
# Case-sensitive exact match across the project (ripgrep)
rg --word-regexp 'FunctionName' --type-add 'src:*.{ts,tsx,js,jsx,py,go,rs,java}' -t src -n
# If ripgrep is unavailable, fall back to grep
grep -rn --include='*.ts' --include='*.tsx''FunctionName' src/
# Find all call sites, including method calls and chained usage
rg 'functionName\s*\(' -n --glob '*.{ts,tsx,js,jsx}'# Find type annotations, generic usage, and interface references
rg ':\s*FunctionName[<\s,\)]' -n --glob '*.{ts,tsx}'# Find decorators or annotations referencing the target
rg '@FunctionName|@.*FunctionName' -n
File and path search
# Find files whose name matches the concept
find . -type f \( -name '*function-name*' -o -name '*FunctionName*' \) -not -path '*/node_modules/*'# Find config or manifest entries
rg 'function.name|functionName' -g '*.{json,yaml,yml,toml,ini,env}'
Phase 2 — Structural and Dependency Tracing
Move beyond text matching to understand the dependency graph around the target.
Import/export tracing
# Who imports this symbol?
rg "import.*FunctionName.*from" -n --glob '*.{ts,tsx,js,jsx}'
rg "from\s+['\"].*function-name['\"]" -n --glob '*.{ts,tsx,js,jsx}'# Who re-exports it? (barrel files, index files)
rg "export.*FunctionName|export \* from.*function-name" -n --glob '*.{ts,tsx,js,jsx}'# For Python
rg "from\s+\S+\s+import\s+.*FunctionName" -n --glob '*.py'
Reverse dependency walk
For each file that contains the target, ask: "What imports this file?"
# Extract the module path from the file, then search for imports of that path
rg "from ['\"].*modules/target-module['\"]" -n --glob '*.{ts,tsx,js,jsx}'
