I implemented this hash (read and edit) approach in tilth if you want to test it out.
https://github.com/jahala/tilth
its on npm and cargo:
- cargo install tilth
- npx tilth
then tilth install claude-code/windsurf/cursor --edit
(--edit flag is needed)
I made "tilth" a few days ago, since I'm consistently trying to get the LLMs to use tools more efficiently and spend less tokens doing it -- original tilth post from Monday: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46952321
You might find it useful for markdown as well, especially if you add support for section-based addressing (e.g. cat or replace a section at a time). Section-based addresses are nice because they tend to be stable across versions.
Great idea - Just implemented this.
(Already published on cargo, on npm in a few mins).
benchmarks vs grep?
tilth isn’t trying to replace grep for raw text search — for that, it wraps ripgrep internally so perf is comparable. It’s about reducing round-trips and giving the agent a verified edit workflow, not faster search.
Instead of cat + grep + manual line counting, one tool call returns a structural outline of a large file, lets you drill into sections, and since this last update also returns hashline-anchored output that an edit tool can target.
well yah, that's what I mean how better is it versus cat + grep + manual line counting. Agents tend to perform worse with niche tools
Thank you for this question - I'm building out a benchmark now. Initial results are very promising, will update you once it's done!