Use when searching codebases (text, structural/AST, files by name, PDFs/archives, code stats) or building context before a task.

File Search Skill Efficient CLI search tools for AI agents. Tool Selection Guide Task Use Instead of Search text in code files rg (ripgrep) grep , grep r Find files by name/path fd find , ls R Structural/syntax aware code search sg (ast grep) regex hacks Apply rule packs (security/lint, taint) semgrep regex CI checks Search PDFs, Office docs, archives rga (ripgrep all) manual extraction Count lines of code by language tokei cloc , wc l Code stats with complexity metrics scc cloc , tokei Decision flow: text → rg structural → sg rule packs → semgrep filenames → fd PDFs/archives → rga LOC → tokei / scc Quick Examples Best Practices 1. Start narrow. Specify types ( t , lang , e ), scope dirs, count first ( rg c ). 2. Exclude noise ( g '!vendor/' , fd E node modules ). 3. Batch independent queries. Union patterns with rg e P1 e P2 e P3 (one walk), or issue distinct queries as parallel tool calls in one message — never sequential && chains. 4. json for programmatic processing. 5. rg ≠ fd types. rg t ts includes .tsx ; fd e ts does NOT. No t tsx in rg. See [references/search strategies.md](references/search strategies.md). Beyond Local Files If local search finds nothing and context lives in issues/PRs/external docs — hand off ( gh , Jira, WebFetch). Issue keys in comments signal this. See [references/remote handoff.md](references/remote handoff.md). References Topic File rg flags, patterns, recipes [references/ripgrep patterns.md](references/ripgrep patterns.md) ast grep patterns by language [references/ast grep patterns.md](references/ast grep patterns.md) semgrep rules and taint mode [references/semgrep patterns.md](references/semgrep patterns.md) fd flags, usage, fd+rg combos [references/fd guide.md](references/fd guide.md) rga formats, usage, caching [references/rga guide.md](references/rga guide.md) tokei and scc usage [references/code metrics.md](references/code metrics.md) PreToolUse nudge (ships with plugin) [references/enforcement hook.md](references/enforcement hook.md) Search targeting strategies [references/search strategies.md](references/search strategies.md) Remote context handoff guide [references/remote handoff.md](references/remote handoff.md) Modern CLI tools comparison (legacy→modern, all domains) [cli tools skill/SKILL.md preferred modern tools](https://github.com/netresearch/cli tools skill/blob/main/skills/cli tools/SKILL.md preferred modern tools)

file-search