Open-source Trace CLI pushes evidence-driven codebase investigation for AI agents
jse78 · reddit · 2026-10-19
A developer released Trace, an open-source CLI targeting how much unnecessary context coding agents consume by reading entire files. Trace enables progressive, evidence-driven investigation: map functions (trace --functions .), diff versions, inspect a specific symbol, or compare implementations. The proposed workflow — investigate, gather evidence, form hypotheses, validate, implement — uses 20-30 targeted requests per investigation. A larger platform, Traceflow, extends the approach. The author asks whether evidence-driven investigation beats ever-larger context windows.
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