terraphim / terraphim/terraphim-ai

[feat] Evaluate rlmgrep for terraphim-ai codebase search

Open
#871 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Dominant language
Rust
Stars
62
Forks
5
Avg merge
2h 27m
Merged PRs (30d)
1

Description

Context

rlmgrep (github.com/halfprice06/rlmgrep) is a grep-shaped CLI search tool powered by DSPy's RLM (Refined Language Model). It accepts natural-language queries and returns matches in grep-like format, with full visibility into the RLM's reasoning loop (via rlmgrep -v).

Relevant signal: Alex has liked and bookmarked the rlmgrep launch tweet, indicating strong interest in RLM-based search for codebases.

Problem Statement

Current codebase search tools (grep, ripgrep, gtr for issue triage) operate on text/regex patterns. RLM-based search could:

  1. Answer natural-language questions about the codebaseWhere is retry/backoff configured and what are the defaults? — and return the actual source lines in grep format
  2. Understand semantic intent — e.g. find the error handling around the gitea API calls without needing to know the exact function names
  3. Expose the RLM reasoning tracerlmgrep -v shows iteration-by-iteration reasoning, which is audit-worthy for AI-assisted toolchains

Evaluation Criteria

  • Install rlmgrep: uv tool install --python 3.11 rlmgrep
  • Run against terraphim-ai Rust codebase — test semantic queries about error handling, executor selection, RLM hook invocation
  • Run against terraphim/terraphim-skills skill definitions — test natural-language skill discovery
  • Compare output quality vs grep -r and gtr for the same queries
  • Evaluate --answer mode for generating code answers grounded in actual source
  • Assess whether the verbose RLM trace (-v) is useful for agent audit trails
  • Document findings in .docs/rlmgrep-evaluation.md

rlmgrep Key Features to Test

Feature What to test
--answer Natural-language code Q&A with citations
-C N Context lines in grep format
-v verbose Full RLM iteration traces
PDF/Office support Skill docs in .docs/
Multi-provider OpenAI vs Anthropic vs Gemini outputs
Sidecar caching Image/audio description caching

References

  • rlmgrep repo: github.com/halfprice06/rlmgrep
  • Author: @gooby_esq (Daniel Price)
  • Install: uv tool install --python 3.11 rlmgrep
  • RLM concept: DSPy RLM — LLM that generates code to fetch information, then reasons over results before submitting

Labels

feature/evaluation, AI/RLM, good-first-issue

Priority

P2 — informational/value assessment before committing any integration work.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Install rlmgrep with uv tool install --python 3.11 rlmgrep, then run the listed semantic queries against the terraphim-ai Rust codebase and terraphim/terraphim-skills. Compare results with grep -r and gtr, test the listed modes and providers, and record whether the criteria are met in .docs/rlmgrep-evaluation.md.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
python, rust
Domain
ai, documentation, search
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Clearly specified
Newbie friendliness
55/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.