File Search Skill

An AI agent skill that teaches efficient CLI-based code and file search strategies. Provides tool selection guidance, pattern recipes, and best practices for searching codebases of any size.

Tools Covered

Tool	Purpose	Replaces
ripgrep (rg)	Ultra-fast text/regex search	grep, grep -r
ast-grep (sg)	Structural/syntax-aware code search	complex regex hacks
fd (fd)	Fast file finder	find
ripgrep-all (rga)	Search PDFs, Office docs, archives	manual text extraction
tokei	Fast code statistics by language	cloc, wc -l
scc	Code counter with complexity analysis	cloc, tokei (when complexity needed)

Key Principles

• Use rg instead of grep for text search in source code
• Use fd instead of find for file discovery
• Use rga instead of rg when searching non-code files (PDFs, Office docs, archives)
• Use sg instead of regex when matching code structure
• Use tokei or scc to assess codebase size, not cloc or wc -l
• Always start with targeted, narrow searches and widen only if needed
• Always specify file types/languages to limit search scope
• Count matches before viewing full results to avoid overwhelming output

Installation

Requires Composer and the composer-agent-skill-plugin.

composer require netresearch/agent-file-search

Skill Structure

skills/file-search/
  SKILL.md                          # Main skill file (tool selection, usage, best practices)
  references/
    ripgrep-patterns.md             # Extensive rg pattern recipes by use case
    ast-grep-patterns.md            # Structural search patterns by language
    tool-comparison.md              # Detailed comparison and decision guide

License

MIT - see LICENSE for details.