ast-grep vs Shebe
ast-grep
ast-grep.github.ioShebe
github.comSide by side
| Figure | ast-grep | Shebe |
|---|---|---|
| Price from | Free | Free |
| Free plan | Yes | Yes |
| Free trial | — | — |
| Open source | — | — |
| Web | Yes | — |
| Windows | Yes | Yes |
| macOS | Yes | Yes |
| Linux | Yes | Yes |
| API | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hosted | — | Yes |
| Plans published | 1 | 1 |
| Spec score · Code Search Tools | 9.1 (#1) | 7.8 (#12) |
| Integrations | The documentation describes editor integrations, including a VS Code extension and language server support for editors such as Vim and Neovim. | The installation guide documents MCP setup and a Zed editor configuration, and points to the organization for VS Code and other editor extensions. |
| Performance | The site describes search and replace across thousands of source files as powered by parallel Rust. | The README reports 2 ms query latency and indexing rates of 1,928 to 11,210 files per second in its listed benchmarks. |
| Purpose | ast-grep is a fast, polyglot tool for structural code search, linting, and rewriting at scale. | Shebe is a local code-search tool that uses BM25 full-text search for code repositories. |
| Support | The project directs users with questions or issues to GitHub or Discord and also points to Stack Overflow and Reddit. | The project provides installation, configuration, troubleshooting, and MCP setup guides in its repository. |
Plans
In their own words
ast-grep
ast-grep is a free, open-source tool for structural code search, linting, and rewriting. It matches patterns against syntax-tree nodes, helping developers locate and change code across a codebase rather than searching plain text. Its CLI can preview and apply rewrites interactively, and scan configurable YAML rules with error, warning, info, or hint severity. Rules can combine pattern, kind, regex, relational, and composite conditions, and CLI commands help create and snapshot-test them. The project says it supports more than 20 languages and can load custom languages. JavaScript and WebAssembly APIs allow programmatic syntax-tree work; a browser playground offers a way to try patterns without local installation. Editor options include a VS Code extension and language-server setups, including for Vim and Neovim. The tool is free, has a web interface, and is distributed through package managers or built from source. Its FAQ notes that some advanced static-analysis information is unsupported, and one rule cannot target multiple languages at once.
Shebe
Shebe is a local code-search tool that uses BM25 full-text search across code repositories. It ranks results and supports phrase searches, Boolean queries, and literal matching. Fourteen MCP tools serve coding agents with functions including search, repository indexing, file reading, and reference finding. Shebe runs without embeddings, a GPU, or a cloud service, but repositories must be cloned locally before indexing; remote repository URLs are not supported. Its text-based search does not provide semantic similarity, so related words such as “login” and “authenticate” may not match. Prebuilt binaries are listed for Linux x86_64 and macOS on Apple Silicon and Intel; Linux ARM64 is planned. Windows users need to build it from source. The installation guide covers MCP setup and Zed configuration and points to the organization for VS Code and other editor extensions. Shebe is free and licensed under Apache-2.0. The README reports 2 ms query latency and indexing rates from 1,928 to 11,210 files per second in its listed benchmarks.