Agentic Search vs Vector Search for Coding Agents: We Ran the Eval — Braintrust
Source
youtube.com
Author
AI Engineer
Date
Why it matters
Choosing vector retrieval over grep-style agentic search for a coding AI agentAn AI system that doesn't just answer once but works toward a goal in a loop — taking actions, reading the results, and deciding what to do next.Full definition → can raise cost about fourfold with no accuracy gain. The talk shows how to build the evalA repeatable test for AI quality — a set of tasks plus scoring — used the way software teams use test suites, because model output is too variable to judge by eyeballing.Full definition → from real fix PRs to check this yourself.
Terms in this piece · Glossary
AI agent — An AI system that doesn't just answer once but works toward a goal in a loop — taking actions, reading the results, and deciding what to do next.
eval — A repeatable test for AI quality — a set of tasks plus scoring — used the way software teams use test suites, because model output is too variable to judge by eyeballing.
embedding — A list of numbers representing a piece of text's meaning, so that similar meanings end up numerically close and can be searched.
