pi-reflag

A pi coding agent extension that transparently rewrites grep commands to rg (ripgrep) and find commands to fd before they execute — faster searches with zero agent behavior change.

Install

pi install npm:@piotr-oles/pi-reflag

Requires rg and fd on $PATH:

brew install ripgrep fd      # macOS
apt install ripgrep fd-find  # Debian/Ubuntu

How it works

Intercepts bash tool calls in the tool_call event. When a command segment starts with grep, find, or xargs grep/xargs find (including piped commands), it translates the arguments to their rg/fd equivalents and rewrites the command in place before execution. The agent never sees the rewrite.

Subshell constructs ($(…), (…)) and commands with variable assignments are left untouched to avoid misinterpreting nested or complex commands.

grep → rg

What gets translated:

grep flag	rg equivalent
-r, -R, --recursive	dropped (rg is recursive by default)
-i, --ignore-case	-i
-n, --line-number	-n
-v, --invert-match	-v
-w, --word-regexp	-w
-l, --files-with-matches	-l
-c, --count	-c
-o, --only-matching	-o
-E, --extended-regexp	dropped (rg uses ERE by default)
-G, --basic-regexp	dropped, pattern converted from BRE to ERE
-F, --fixed-strings	-F
-P, --perl-regexp	-P
-A, -B, -C	passed through
--include=<glob>	-g <glob>
--exclude=<glob>	-g !<glob>
--exclude-dir=<dir>	-g !<dir>/
-s	--no-messages
-N (numeric context)	-C N

find → fd

What gets translated:

find expression	fd equivalent
(always)	-H added — fd excludes hidden files by default, find doesn't
(auto mode)	--no-ignore added when searching inside a known ignored directory
-name <glob>	-g <glob>
-iname <glob>	-i -g <glob>
-name a -o -name b	-g {a,b} (brace expansion)
! -name <glob> / -not -name <glob>	-E <glob>
-type f/d/l	-t f/d/l
-maxdepth N	-d N
-mindepth N	--min-depth N
-exec cmd {} \;	-x cmd {}
-exec cmd {} +	-X cmd {}
-print0	-0
-print	dropped (fd default)
-L / -follow	-L
-path <pat> -prune	-E <pat> (exclude directory)
-path <pat>	-p <pat> (full-path match)
-regex <pat>	<pat> (fd regex)
-iregex <pat>	-i <pat>
-size <spec>	-S <spec>
-newer <file>	--newer <file>
-mtime/-atime/-ctime -N	--changed-within Nd
-mtime/-atime/-ctime +N	--changed-before Nd
-mmin/-amin/-cmin -N	--changed-within Nmin
-mmin/-amin/-cmin +N	--changed-before Nmin
-user <name>	--owner <name>
-group <name>	--owner :<name>
-empty	-t e
-executable	-t x
-xdev / -mount	--one-file-system
-quit	-1

Ignore mode

Controls when --no-ignore is passed to fd (so it searches inside .gitignored directories):

Mode	Behaviour
auto (default)	adds --no-ignore when the search path contains a known ignored directory (e.g. node_modules, .venv, .yarn, dist, target, …)
no-ignore	always adds --no-ignore
ignore	never adds --no-ignore

pi --pi-reflag-ignore-mode=no-ignore

PI_REFLAG_IGNORE_MODE=no-ignore pi

node_modules, .yarn, .pnpm-store, .parcel-cache, .turbo, .vite, .cache, .eslintcache, .stylelintcache, .next, .nuxt, .svelte-kit, .vuepress, .output, .docusaurus, .temp, .serverless, .firebase, dist, build, out, target, debug, obj, artifacts, _deps, CMakeFiles, coverage, .nyc_output, .hypothesis, __pycache__, .pytest_cache, .tox, .nox, .venv, venv, .ipynb_checkpoints, vendor, .bundle, .gradle, .mvn, _build, deps, .git

Verbose mode

See exactly how each command was rewritten in the UI:

pi --pi-reflag-verbose

PI_REFLAG_VERBOSE=true pi

Thanks

• ripgrep by Andrew Gallant
• fd by David Peter
• greprip-rs by kaofelix — grep→rg and find→fd translation logic ported from this project (MIT)
• reflag by kluzzebass — additional find→fd flag mappings referenced from this project (MIT)

Development

pnpm install
pnpm test
pnpm typecheck
pnpm check

To test changes manually:

pi -e packages/pi-reflag/src/index.ts