Pensieve developer reports 18% lower costs for coding-agent lookups

Pensieve's developer reports that Claude Code using its local search tool cost 18% less per code lookup and used 16% fewer tokens in a benchmark across four repositories. The tool gives coding agents relevant passages with file names and line numbers through MCP, an interface for connecting agents to tools. The test ran the same 72 held-out tasks twice with each setup. Pensieve found the right file in 131 of 144 runs, compared with 123 using grep alone, and used 43% fewer tool calls. The Pensieve setup also included added agent instructions. For exact error messages, a single grep search performed better.