Agent tools

When kicking off a new project and cursor or claude code, I usually put this in a CLAUDE.md, .cursorrules, AGENTS.md, or GEMINI.md (whatever file is relevant for that agent).

I have seem a marked difference in accuracy and speed of basic agent tasks like grepping through the repo, with just a few of these tools.

Here's a (non-comprehensive) list

File Navigation & Search

• tree - Visualize directory structure (use instead of find for visual overview)

  tree -L 3 -I 'node_modules|target|.git'  # Show 3 levels, ignore build dirs
  

• fd - Fast find alternative (use instead of find)

  fd '\.rs$'  # Find all Rust files
  fd -e mp3   # Find all MP3 files
  

• ripgrep (rg) - Blazing fast text search (Claude already has Grep tool, but rg is useful in scripts)

  rg "detect_bpm" packages/audio-engine/  # Search for function
  

• ast-grep - AST-based code search for precise refactoring

  ast-grep -p 'function $FUNC($$$)' web/app/src/  # Find all functions
  ast-grep -p 'class $NAME extends $BASE' --lang ts  # Find subclass definitions
  

Code Analysis & Display

• bat - Cat with syntax highlighting (use for quick file viewing)

  bat packages/audio-engine/src/main.rs  # View with syntax highlighting
  

• tokei - Fast code statistics

  tokei                              # Count lines of code by language
  tokei apps/web/                    # Stats for TypeScript code
  

Data Processing

• jq - JSON processor (essential for testing API responses)

  curl http://localhost:8080/api/tracks | jq '.tracks[] | {bpm, key}'