find_pattern

Textual search, scoped to the graph. Runs git grep and returns path:line:col: text, optionally confined to a path prefix or to the files that import a given symbol.

This is the deliberate escape hatch. The graph answers structural questions exactly; some questions are not structural (a log string, a TODO, a magic constant, a config key), and pretending otherwise would send you elsewhere. Scoping the search to the graph-relevant file set is what keeps it from becoming an unscoped grep.

Input schema

{
  "type": "object",
  "properties": {
    "pattern": {
      "type": "string",
      "description": "POSIX ERE pattern to search for (use fixed:true for a literal string)"
    },
    "scope": {
      "type": "string",
      "description": "Optional scope: a repo-relative path prefix, or files-importing(<symbol>)"
    },
    "fixed": {
      "type": "boolean",
      "description": "Treat pattern as a literal string instead of a regular expression"
    }
  },
  "required": ["pattern"],
  "additionalProperties": false
}

pattern is a POSIX extended regular expression, not PCRE. Set fixed: true for a literal search, which is also the right choice for anything containing regex metacharacters.

Scoping

scope takes either form:

• A repo-relative path prefix, for example crates/travsr-store/.
• files-importing(<symbol>), which confines the search to files that import that symbol. This is the form that makes the tool graph-aware rather than a plain grep: it answers "where, among the code that actually depends on this, does this text appear".

When to use

• Non-structural text: error strings, TODOs, feature flags, config keys.
• Confirming an empty structural result. If find_references returns nothing and you suspect the index rather than the code, a textual search distinguishes "not there" from "not indexed".
• Symbols the graph cannot model, such as a name built by string concatenation or reflection.

Notes

• Available over both stdio and SSE.
• Backed by git grep, so it only sees tracked files and respects the repo's ignore rules.
• Returns text, not graph nodes. Results are not edges and carry no structural guarantee.
• The CLI equivalent is travsr pattern "<regex>".