3 ms·

I use Copilot and it’s a game-changer for my productivity, but I really wish it was capable of natural language searching. So for example I could ask it “show m

I use Copilot and it’s a game-changer for my productivity, but I really wish it was capable of natural language searching. So for example I could ask it “show me all places in the code where x is assigned a value but a flush() command is not immediately issued afterwards”.

jgilias 2y ago
I think Cursor can do this, if you @codebase, isn’t there something similar in copilot? E.g., your codebase being vectorized, indexed, and used as an embedding?
- shaneofalltrad 2y ago
  I have had Cursor review all my file content solving similar things, but I would think it's limited to VSCode search capabilities and IMHO it's not great. I love how Pycharm handles indexing so search is fast and accurate. If they ever get agents going at the same quality as Cursor I would probably go to Pycharm for that advantage alone.
  - wrs 2y ago
    Cursor implemented their own code indexer so its RAG is not limited by VS Code search.
simonw 2y ago
I answer those kinds of questions by piping my entire codebase into a large context model (like Claude or o3-mini or Gemini) and prompting it directly. Here's a recent example: files-to-prompt datasette tests -e py -c | \ llm -m gemini-2.0-flash-exp -u \ 'which of these files contain tests that indirectly exercise the label_column_for_table() function' https://gist.github.com/simonw/bee455c41d463abc6282a5c9c132c1ad https://gist.github.com/simonw/bee455c41d463abc6282a5c9c132c...
- dplgk 2y ago
  Your code is pretty small if it fits within the context if any major LLM. But very nice if it does!
- singularity2001 2y ago
  doesn't it get very expensive quickly if you don't use prompt cashing
  - simonw 2y ago
    I've had the occasional large prompt that cost ~30c - I often use GPT-4o mini if I'm going to ask follow-up questions because then I get prompt caching without having to configure it.
- mohsen1 2y ago
  https://github.com/bodo-run/yek https://github.com/bodo-run/yek This is more sophisticated for serializing your repo. Please check it out and let me know what do you think?
  - blah2244 2y ago
    Yek is fantastic -- I've converted my whole team to using it for prompting. As input context windows keep increasing, I think it'll just keep becoming more and more valuable -- I can put most of my team's code in Gemini 2.0 now.
skydhash 2y ago
> So for example I could ask it “show me all places in the code where x is assigned a value but a flush() command is not immediately issued afterwards”. Could this not work? (with wathever flag to display the surrounding lines) ripgrep 'x =' | ripgrep 'flush()'

jgilias 2y ago

I think Cursor can do this, if you @codebase, isn’t there something similar in copilot? E.g., your codebase being vectorized, indexed, and used as an embedding?

shaneofalltrad 2y ago
I have had Cursor review all my file content solving similar things, but I would think it's limited to VSCode search capabilities and IMHO it's not great. I love how Pycharm handles indexing so search is fast and accurate. If they ever get agents going at the same quality as Cursor I would probably go to Pycharm for that advantage alone.
- wrs 2y ago
  Cursor implemented their own code indexer so its RAG is not limited by VS Code search.

simonw 2y ago

I answer those kinds of questions by piping my entire codebase into a large context model (like Claude or o3-mini or Gemini) and prompting it directly. Here's a recent example: files-to-prompt datasette tests -e py -c | \ llm -m gemini-2.0-flash-exp -u \ 'which of these files contain tests that indirectly exercise the label_column_for_table() function' https://gist.github.com/simonw/bee455c41d463abc6282a5c9c132c1ad https://gist.github.com/simonw/bee455c41d463abc6282a5c9c132c...

dplgk 2y ago
Your code is pretty small if it fits within the context if any major LLM. But very nice if it does!
singularity2001 2y ago
doesn't it get very expensive quickly if you don't use prompt cashing
- simonw 2y ago
  I've had the occasional large prompt that cost ~30c - I often use GPT-4o mini if I'm going to ask follow-up questions because then I get prompt caching without having to configure it.
mohsen1 2y ago
https://github.com/bodo-run/yek https://github.com/bodo-run/yek This is more sophisticated for serializing your repo. Please check it out and let me know what do you think?
- blah2244 2y ago
  Yek is fantastic -- I've converted my whole team to using it for prompting. As input context windows keep increasing, I think it'll just keep becoming more and more valuable -- I can put most of my team's code in Gemini 2.0 now.

skydhash 2y ago

> So for example I could ask it “show me all places in the code where x is assigned a value but a flush() command is not immediately issued afterwards”. Could this not work? (with wathever flag to display the surrounding lines) ripgrep 'x =' | ripgrep 'flush()'