8 posts carrying this tag.
Local deterministic parsing over 36 tree sitter grammars, typed nodes, provenance tagged edges, Apache 2.0, no vector store and no telemetry. That is a clean design and the privacy position is better than most of the category. The problem starts the moment your organisation has more than one repository, and it is not a problem more parsing solves.
A code graph takes a whole, coherent program and shreds it into a bag of symbols and edges. It is genuinely useful, but it is a teardown, and the meaning never survives the pieces. A verifiable intermediate representation is the opposite move. It lifts your code into a higher layer that keeps the intent intact, then checks every change against it. Here is the difference between shredding and preserving, and why it decides everything downstream.
Vector search and GraphRAG look like opposites, but they share the same final move. Parse the code, retrieve some of it, rerank it, and stuff it into the context window. That last step is where both of them rot, because a model that is handed a pile of chunks degrades the same way no matter how the pile was chosen. Here is why the retrieval layer is not the cure for context rot, and what is.
The claim that a verifiable IR beats vector search and GraphRAG only matters if the numbers hold up. So here is the run. 46 Kubernetes-ecosystem repositories, 150,000 files, 8 GB of code, measured end to end. What we tested, how we scored it, and why feeding the model 22x more context made it cheaper and more accurate at the same time.
Every tool that feeds your codebase to an AI coding agent picks one of four representations. AST parsing, vector embeddings, code graphs, or a verifiable intermediate representation. Here is what each one keeps, what each one throws away, and why the first three are features of the fourth.
Code graph RAG fixed the biggest flaw in vector search. It follows real edges instead of guessing at similarity. But a graph of symbols is still not a graph of meaning, and it cannot tell you whether a change still does what the system is supposed to do. Here is how code graph RAG actually works, where it stops, and why a verifiable intermediate representation is the layer above it.
A comprehensive map of the open source tools providing context to AI coding agents in 2026, grouped by underlying technical approach (vector embeddings, AST parsing, compiler indexers, and LLM-generated metadata), with an honest analysis of where each one wins and where ByteBell's cross-repo, on-prem, business-context graph is the right answer.
Vector embeddings treat code like english prose. AST parsers see structure but not meaning. Raw LLMs forget everything every session. Here is why the LLM compiler pattern with a persistent semantic graph is the only approach that actually works for cross-repository code intelligence, and why open source models at $7 per 1000 files make it practical today.
