Ripgrep

Fast, recursive text search tool written in Rust. Drop-in replacement for grep with smarter defaults.

ripgrep (rg) is the standard text search tool across all of Kevin's projects. The root agent instructions and Cursor rules both require rg / rg --files for repo search because it is fast, recursive by default, and respects ignore files unless told otherwise. Source: AGENTS.md; config/cursor/rules/ripgrep.mdc; BurntSushi/ripgrep README

Why ripgrep over grep

When grep still makes sense

• Portability - POSIX shell scripts that run on minimal environments (Alpine Docker, embedded, CI containers without custom tooling).
• Simple stdin pipes - for trivial echo x | grep y one-liners the performance difference is negligible, but rg works here too.

Key flags

rg "pattern"                    # Recursive search
rg "pattern" -t py              # Filter by file type
rg "pattern" -g "*.tsx"         # Filter by glob
rg "pattern" -i                 # Case insensitive
rg "pattern" -l                 # Files with matches only
rg "pattern" -c                 # Count matches per file
rg "pattern" -A 3 -B 3         # Context lines
rg "pattern" --json             # Machine-readable JSON output
rg -U "multi\nline"             # Multiline matching
rg "pattern" --no-ignore        # Include gitignored files
rg "pattern" --hidden           # Include hidden/dot files
rg "pattern" -w                 # Whole word matching
rg "pattern" --type-add 'web:*.{html,css,js}' -t web  # Custom type

Agent integration

• Cursor - repository rules enforce rg in terminal usage. Source: config/cursor/rules/ripgrep.mdc
• VS Code / Cursor search (Cmd+Shift+F) uses ripgrep as the search backend. Source: VS Code search implementation notes
• Claude Code / Codex - agents should use rg for all shell-based search. Source: AGENTS.md

Installation

brew install ripgrep     # macOS
cargo install ripgrep    # from source

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Timeline

• 2026-06-17 | Added provenance and clarified that the repo-level rule, not this page, is the enforcement surface. Source: AGENTS.md; config/cursor/rules/ripgrep.mdc
• 2026-04-13 | Added Cursor rule .cursor/rules/ripgrep.mdc enforcing rg over grep. Created wiki page. Source: config/cursor/rules/ripgrep.mdc