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Search & history

Paths: find

gion find chromium/chromium string_util.h        # substring
gion find chromium/chromium 'base/**/*_test.cc'  # glob: * ? ** [...]

Matching is case-insensitive unless the pattern has an uppercase letter.

find and grep use a path index: every file path at a commit, built from the folder listings alone (no file contents). The first build for a repo fetches every folder once (chromium: 45k trees, 510k paths, a 15 MB index). Later, moving to a newer commit fetches only the folders that changed, and a commit already indexed costs one ref lookup. Each branch or tag keeps its own index, and commits named by id share one more, so searching an old commit doesn't throw away the default branch's index.

grep --path with a folder (--path base/strings, or a glob under one like base/*/x.h) skips the path index: gion fetches only those folders, so it's fast at any commit, even an old one.

Contents: grep

gion grep chromium/chromium 'TrimWhitespaceASCII\('
gion grep baz-scm/baz 'TODO' --path bff/src -i -l

Output is path:line:text. gion picks how to search:

  • Few enough files (after --path, at most --max-files, default 5000): fetch them all (once; they stay cached) and scan locally with the regex.
  • More than that: ask GitHub code search which files contain the regex's longest literal, fetch only those, and scan them with the real regex. Lines are exact, but GitHub indexes only the default branch and skips some files (very large ones, for example), so gion notes where candidates came from. A regex with no 3+ character literal (like a top-level a|b) can't use this; narrow it with --path.

--local forces a full scan and --forge forces code search.

GitHub allows about 10 code search requests a minute per user, and one grep takes 1 to 10 of them (100 results per page, up to 1000 results). A single --path folder is passed to the search too, so a narrower grep needs fewer pages. Agents grepping in parallel share that budget. When it runs out, grep stops and says how long to wait; meanwhile narrow with --path so it scans locally, use --local, or gion clone the folders you need and search them there.

Agents with the Baz MCP server can skip that budget: its remote_grep and remote_file_search tools search Baz's index of the repo with full regexes and no GitHub rate limit. gion's errors and notes point there when code search is the bottleneck; read the hits with gion cat, since the index can trail the branch by a few commits.

Install it from baz-scm/baz-plugin. In Claude Code:

/plugin marketplace add baz-scm/baz-plugin
/plugin install baz@baz

The README there covers Codex and Cursor. The first Baz tool call opens a browser to log in.

Changes: diff

gion diff baz-scm/gion main~3 main             # unified diff
gion diff baz-scm/gion v0.1.1..v0.2.0 --stat    # lines added/removed per file
gion diff baz-scm/gion v0.1.1..v0.2.0 --name-status
gion diff baz-scm/gion HEAD --path internal    # what the last commit changed there
gion diff                                      # in a workspace: your edits

Only folders and files that differ are fetched, so a diff costs the size of the change, not of the repo.

Commits: log

gion log chromium/chromium -n 20 --oneline
gion log chromium/chromium --path base/strings/string_util.h -n 5
gion log                                       # in a workspace: its commit's history

Commits are fetched as history without trees or files, up to 256 per round trip, so plain logs are fast on any repo (chromium: 1.3 s for 20 commits).

--path keeps the commits that changed that file or directory, with git's default history simplification (a merge that kept one parent's version is followed down that parent only). On GitHub with credentials, the commits API answers directly (chromium: ~3 s). Elsewhere, or with --local, gion walks history and checks the path in batches of commits, which is slow for a rarely changed path in a huge repo; it stops after 20,000 commits and says so.

Lines: blame

gion blame chromium/chromium HEAD:base/strings/string_util.h -L 1,40
gion blame src/app.py                          # in a workspace

For each line, the commit that last changed it. On GitHub with credentials, gion uses GitHub's blame API (chromium, 13 years of history: ~8 s). Otherwise, or with --local, it walks the file's history and diffs versions line by line; that matches git blame in tests, but doesn't follow renames.