ev-grep

A command-line search tool for finding code by behavior.

Install

Download a binary for macOS or Linux, on ARM64 or x86-64:

curl -fsSL https://ev-grep.com/install.sh | bash

The installer puts ev-grep in ~/.local/bin. Add that directory to your PATH if needed. You can also install a specific release with mise:

mise use -g github:macromackie/ev-grep@0.2.3

Archives and checksums are on the releases page.

Search

Set an OpenRouter API key, then describe what you want to find:

export OPENROUTER_API_KEY='your-key'
ev-grep 'Catches a database failure and returns an empty result' src/

Queries and selected file contents go to the provider. Requests use your account and may incur charges. Use --dry-run to inspect file selection without an API key or network requests:

ev-grep 'Catches a database failure and returns an empty result' src/ --dry-run

Add :N-M to a file path to assess only those lines, such as lines a branch changed: ev-grep 'Writes to the database' src/users.py:40-72. The pipelines guide gets paths and ranges from rg, git diff, and ast-grep.

Results

Example output, showing only stdout:

src/users.py     match
src/actions.py   uncertain

match means the model judges that the file matches the query. uncertain means it lacks enough context or confidence. Terminal output omits no_match files and writes a count summary to stderr. Use --json to include every assessment. Use --sarif to write a SARIF log for code scanning tools such as GitHub's.

Each file is evaluated on its own. ev-grep does not read related files for context or run the code. Results can be wrong; use them to decide what to inspect. Request failures are reported as errors, not as no_match.

See the documentation for file filters, provider configuration, exit codes, JSONL output, and SARIF output. The same pages are available at ev-grep.com/docs.

Build from source

Install Rust, then run these commands from a source checkout:

cargo build --release --locked -p ev-grep
cargo install --path crates/ev-grep --locked

The toolchain file selects the Rust version. The build produces target/release/ev-grep; installation is optional.

Released under the MIT license.