Memtrace
A third-party code intelligence tool integrated with Orbit that indexes your codebase for fast semantic search, symbol lookup, and compressed source reading — reducing token cost when navigating large files.
What it is
Memtrace is a third-party bi-temporal code intelligence tool deeply integrated with Orbit. It indexes your codebase into a semantic graph, enabling fast symbol lookup, code search, and compressed source reading — operations that would otherwise require reading entire large files. Orbit uses Memtrace automatically when working with files over 100KB, surfacing a warning and suggesting Memtrace tools instead of raw file reads. Memtrace runs as a background daemon and is free for solo developers.
When you would use it
Memtrace is active automatically. You benefit from it whenever an agent navigates your codebase — find_symbol, find_code, and get_source_window calls go through Memtrace's semantic index rather than reading files raw. If Memtrace isn't running, you'll see a warning in Orbit's server logs.
Common operations
- Navigating to a function or symbol in a large codebase without reading the whole file.
- Finding where a pattern or integration is wired in across multiple files.
- Reducing token cost when working with files over 100KB.
Related terms
Dashed terms are named in the source but do not have a page here yet.
Where this is taught
No learning path uses this term yet. Browse the Learning Atlas for guided sequences through related ideas.