The reported average: 92 percent fewer tool calls and 71 percent faster exploration.
A concrete example: on the VS Code codebase, answering "how does the extension host communicate with the main process" took 52 tool calls without CodeGraph and 3 with it. On a Java codebase, the agent answered the full question in a single CodeGraph call and zero file reads.
A fair note: these are self-reported, single-query benchmarks, so treat them as best-case. But the underlying idea does not depend on the exact percentage. Giving an agent a structured index instead of forcing it to explore blind is sound regardless.
Getting started
The interactive installer wires everything up:
npx @colbymchenry/codegraph
It installs CodeGraph globally, configures the MCP server in your Claude config, sets up auto-allow permissions, and adds global instructions. Then restart Claude Code and initialize a project:
cd your-project
codegraph init -i
Once a .codegraph/ directory exists, Claude Code uses the tools automatically.
A bonus that stands on its own
Even if you ignore the AI angle, one command is worth knowing: codegraph affected. It traces import dependencies transitively to find which test files are impacted by a set of changed files.
git diff --name-only HEAD | codegraph affected --stdin --quiet
Drop that in a CI script or git hook and you only run the tests that a change can actually break. That is a genuine speedup with no AI involved at all.
Is it useful?
Very, if you work in a large or unfamiliar codebase with Claude Code. The bigger and less familiar the repo, the more discovery the agent has to do, and the more CodeGraph saves you in tokens and wall-clock time.
The honest limit: on a small project, an agent can grep a 20-file repo cheaply enough that the index buys you little. The payoff scales with codebase size.
The takeaway
AI coding agents are not slow because the model is slow. They are slow because they spend most of their time figuring out where things are. CodeGraph solves that once, locally, and keeps the map current as you work. For anyone using Claude Code on a serious codebase, it is a low-effort, high-return addition.