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Dev tools · June 5, 2023

Codespelunker – A command line search tool with TUI and HTTP modes

I initially built cs (codespelunker) as a way to answer the question, can BM25 relevance search work without building an index? Turns out it can, and so I iterated on the idea, building it into a full CLI tool. Recently I wanted to improve it by adding relevance of tools like Sourcegraph or Zoekt but again without adding an index. cs uses scc https://github.com/boyter/scc to understand the structure of the file on the fly. As such it can filter searches to code, comments or strings. It also applies a weighted BM25 algorithm where matches in actual code rank higher than…

Codespelunker – A command line search tool with TUI and HTTP modes launched on June 5, 2023 with 71 votes, #1,299 of 4,655 launches that month and more than 90% of that year's launches. The site was still online in September 2026, 3 years on.

In plain words

Codespelunker is a command-line search tool that offers both terminal user interface and HTTP modes for exploring code. It helps developers search through codebases efficiently from the command line. The tool stands out for its flexible interface options, allowing users to choose between a text-based interface or HTTP access depending on their workflow preferences.

written from the facts on this page · September 2026

From the sources

codespelunker - CLI code search tool that understands code structure and ranks results by relevance. No indexing required with CLI, TUI, MCP and HTTP support. - boyter/cs

In the maker’s words, at launch

I initially built cs (codespelunker) as a way to answer the question, can BM25 relevance search work without building an index? Turns out it can, and so I iterated on the idea, building it into a full CLI tool. Recently I wanted to improve it by adding relevance of tools like Sourcegraph or Zoekt but again without…

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