Symbol Search

Symbol search combines Reflex’s full-text trigram search with runtime Tree-sitter parsing to filter results down to symbol definitions — functions, classes, structs, interfaces, and more.

How it works

Reflex uses a two-phase approach:

1. Trigram search finds all files containing the query text (fast, milliseconds)
2. Tree-sitter parsing runs on each candidate file to identify symbol definitions (lazy, on-demand)

This “runtime symbol detection” architecture means indexing is instant (no parsing during rfx index) while symbol searches are still fast because trigrams narrow the search space first.

Basic symbol search

Add --symbols (or -s) to any query:

rfx query "authenticate" --symbols

src/auth/mod.rs:42  [Function] pub fn authenticate(creds: &Credentials) -> Result<Session>
1 result in 4ms

Without --symbols, this query would also find calls, comments, and string literals containing “authenticate”. With it, only definitions appear.

Filter by symbol kind

Use --kind to restrict to a specific symbol type:

# Only functions
rfx query "handle" --symbols --kind function

# Only structs
rfx query "Config" --symbols --kind struct

# Only interfaces (TypeScript, Go)
rfx query "Repository" --symbols --kind interface

Available symbol kinds

Kind	Description
function	Functions, methods
class	Classes
struct	Structs (Rust, Go, C)
enum	Enums
trait	Traits (Rust)
interface	Interfaces (TypeScript, Go, Java)
type	Type aliases
constant	Constants
variable	Variables, let bindings
method	Methods (when distinguishable from functions)

Symbol kinds vary by language — see Supported Languages for what each language extracts.

Combine with other filters

Symbol search composes with all other query filters:

# Symbols in a specific language
rfx query "parse" --symbols --lang rust

# Symbols matching a path pattern
rfx query "Handler" --symbols --paths "src/api/"

# JSON output for tooling
rfx query "Config" --symbols --kind struct --json

Performance

Symbol search adds Tree-sitter parsing to the query pipeline, but this only runs on files that pass the trigram filter. Typical overhead is 1–5ms on top of the base query time.

On large codebases, symbol search is often faster in practice because it returns fewer results, reducing output formatting time.

Next steps

• Regex & AST Patterns — structural code pattern matching
• Supported Languages — symbol types by language
• CLI Commands — full rfx query reference