Do Coding Agents Need Code Graphs?

A token-budgeted benchmark of lexical search, syntax indexes, repository maps, and dependency graphs

Abstract. “Graphs understand repositories” and “grep is enough” are both underspecified claims. A representation is useful only if it helps a system retrieve change-relevant context more accurately or cheaply under a fixed budget.

Planned (weeks 11–18). Conditions will be named honestly (“graph expansion on top of lexical seeds”, not “graph vs grep”), and the lexical bias of patched-file ground truth will be acknowledged up front.