You'd need all-news tools for non-text world as well. So the real choice is either: - new tool: grep with caching reverse-formatter filter. - new tool: ast-g

You'd need all-news tools for non-text world as well. So the real choice is either: - new tool: grep with caching reverse-formatter filter. - new tool: ast-grep with understanding of AST serialization format for your specific language. At least in the first case, you still have fall back.