Mantic Semantic Code Search

Core Principle

Use Mantic as the initial discovery mechanism. Invoke search_files before attempting to read file lists, guess paths, or use grep/find.

When to Use

• •Finding where functionality is implemented
• •Understanding how components work
• •Locating definitions and references
• •Exploring architecture and patterns
• •Any codebase discovery task

Search Strategy

1. •

   Natural language queries - Use descriptive phrases, not just keywords

   • •Good: "user authentication logic", "stripe payment processing"
   • •Bad: "auth", "stripe"
2. •

   Trust relevance scores - Higher scores indicate closer match to intent

3. •

   Search a lot of files - Set the max results parameter to a high enough value that you're confident you're finding all the relevant files (or don't set it at all). Mantic is very fast so searching many files is cheap.

4. •

   Fall back gracefully - Use grep/find if Mantic yields insufficient results

Tools

• •search_files - Primary search tool. Use includeImpact: true for blast radius analysis before changes.
• •analyze_intent - Understand query category and extract keywords
• •session_start/end - Track context across related queries; viewed files get boosted in future searches
• •session_record_view - Record files viewed/modified for context carryover