Vectors vs. Graphs: Picking the Right Code Intelligence Tool

Ask five teams building AI coding tools how they represent a codebase and you'll get two camps: dump everything into a vector store, or model the code as a graph. Over the past few months I've been benchmarking both against real repos, using Claude Code, Cursor-style agent workflows, and a few custom LLM pipelines. Neither side is wrong — they're just answering different questions, and knowing which one you're asking matters more than picking the "best" approach.

Vector-first tools embed files, functions, and docstrings into semantic space. You query in natural language, pull back chunks, and feed them to an LLM as context. It's deceptively simple to set up — a working prototype in an afternoon — and it handles "