Testing on 219 packages (4,535 classes, 35,972 methods) across major Pharo projects, a package-aware 'Direct Package Dependencies' completion heuristic beat Pharo's default semantics-only ranking.
For 3-character prefixes, Mean Reciprocal Rank rose from 0.20 to 0.44 for class-name completion and from 0.10 to 0.41 for method-name completion.
The gain came from a lightweight structural signal (package dependency distance), not a new learning model -- no retraining needed.
Based on these results, the Pharo Industrial Consortium adopted the Direct Package Dependencies heuristic for the upcoming Pharo 13 release.
Why it matters
Shows a lightweight, non-ML structural signal (package dependencies) measurably improves completion ranking, applicable to any completion engine currently ignoring repository structure.
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