🔧Tool Prompts/file-ops
Grep Tool
src/tools/GrepTool/prompt.ts
Prompt Engineering Insight
The Grep tool prompt uses strong behavioral constraints to prevent the model from falling back to raw shell grep/rg commands, ensuring the purpose-built tool is always used. It provides concrete regex examples as a form of few-shot guidance for pattern syntax, and includes an important disambiguation between grep and ripgrep syntax conventions.
Techniques Used
behavioral-constraintstool-use-guidancefew-shot-examplesscope-limiting
prompt
A powerful search tool built on ripgrep
Usage:
- ALWAYS use Grep for search tasks. NEVER invoke
greporrgas a Bash command. The Grep tool has been optimized for correct permissions and access. - Supports full regex syntax (e.g., "log.*Error", "function\s+\w+")
- Filter files with glob parameter (e.g., "*.js", "**/*.tsx") or type parameter (e.g., "js", "py", "rust")
- Output modes: "content" shows matching lines, "files_with_matches" shows only file paths (default), "count" shows match counts
- Use Agent tool for open-ended searches requiring multiple rounds
- Pattern syntax: Uses ripgrep (not grep) - literal braces need escaping (use
interface\{\}to findinterface{}in Go code) - Multiline matching: By default patterns match within single lines only. For cross-line patterns like
struct \{[\s\S]*?field, usemultiline: true
Tags
grepsearchripgrepregexcontent-search
Appears in use cases
This prompt is a step in curated flows that show how pieces of Claude Code connect for real tasks.