Honest and benchmark proven — a faster Agent: one-shot code search, 37.7% fewer turns, 23.7% less wall-clock (and average 30% cheaper)
Keep using Claude Code normally — LemonCrow sits underneath it and gives the agent better search, shorter file reads, compact command output, and reusable memory.
Live savings and time saved across LemonCrow sessions
Install · Check your savings first · Why trust the numbers? · Results · Pricing
Click for the full walkthrough on lemoncrow.com.
Run this once:
curl -fsSL https://install.lemoncrow.com | bash
Then create or sign in to a free LemonCrow account and activate it inside the project where you use Claude Code:
cd your-project
lc login
lc init
LemonCrow wires in better tools behind the scenes and starts tracking local savings as sessions finish. Remote telemetry is on by default; turn it off anytime with lc telemetry remote off.
lc updateCheck that everything is connected:
lc doctorLemonCrow does not ask you to learn a new coding app. It improves the work Claude Code already does:
| Before | With LemonCrow |
|---|---|
| Claude greps, reads a whole file, greps again to find code. | One-shot code search returns the symbol, its callers, and exact ranges in a single call. |
| The same context gets rediscovered again and again. | Useful session context can be reused, not re-searched. |
| Long grep-and-read loops burn turns and wall-clock time. | Fewer round-trips: 37.7% fewer turns, 23.7% less wall-clock on SWE-bench Verified. |
| Speed and savings are hard to see. | A local meter shows turns, tokens, and cost dropping in real time. |
lc init gives Claude Code 5 tools and hides the built-ins behind them — one way to do each job, not two.
Find things in one shot -- no wandering the codebase call after call.
| LemonCrow tool | Replaces (hidden from the model) | Why |
|---|---|---|
code_search |
Grep, Glob | One call returns the symbol, its callers/callees, and ranked source -- no grep-loop-then-read-whole-file. Ranked by call-graph centrality over a tree-sitter symbol table |
read |
Read | Returns an outline or the exact:L10-L40 range, budgeted, instead of the full file |
edit |
Edit, Write | Verified, cross-file edits in one call instead of per-file patch-or-create guessing |
bash |
Bash | Output is capped and structured so a noisy build log can't blow the context window |
web_fetch |
WebFetch | Strips a page to clean Markdown instead of a raw HTML dump |
What's unchanged: Claude Code itself, the model, your workflow. Full internals: Architecture.
A bare MCP server is a library the model can call if it remembers to. A runtime decides what's callable at all — four jobs, four layers:
| Layer | Without it | With it |
|---|---|---|
| Agents — process isolation | a "read-only" agent can still edit | explore/plan/research/review hard-deny edit/write at the host-config level |
| Skills — standard library | multi-step procedures re-improvised every session | encoded once, invoked the same way every time |
| Hooks — interrupts | wasteful re-reads; "done" without a check | bad calls denied before they run; on Claude Code, session close blocked until verification ran (advisory on other hosts today) |
| MCP tools — syscall surface | agents fall back to grep-and-read under pressure | natives hidden — LemonCrow tools are the only surface for those jobs |
Under the coding runtime is a domain-neutral context engine with one contract: one-shot retrieval — a single call returns what the model needs, packed to a token budget; follow-up queries are allowed, retry loops are never required. Retrieval, compression, memory, and replay do not assume code — code is the first conforming retriever (Retriever protocol, lemoncrow.core.capabilities.retrieval), chosen because the pain is mature and the results are measurable. The same engine is being opened to teams building any LLM agent: lemoncrow.com/engine.
Packaged in integrations/agents/ — each a distinct capability grant (subagent name lemoncrow:<mode>), not a persona:
| Agent | Writes? | Use |
|---|---|---|
code |
Yes | default interactive — edits, refactors, features |
auto |
Yes | fully autonomous — CI/headless runs |
solve |
Yes | end-to-end solving of a well-defined task |
execute |
Yes | one verified pass of an accepted plan |
general |
Yes | catch-all for mixed work |
bare |
Yes | minimal toolset, same discipline |
explore |
No | read-only exploration — locate and cite |
plan |
No | read-only planning, stops for human checkpoint |
review |
No | adversarial read-only review |
research |
No | external web research — cited memo |
Packaged in integrations/skills/:
| Skill | What it does |
|---|---|
lc |
manage LemonCrow itself via the CLI |
benchmark |
measure savings on your repo — offline scan or live A/B |
orchestrate |
one structured multi-step task, routed to the right surface |
swarm |
N parallel attempts in isolated worktrees — best result wins |
perf-review |
gate a change on measured performance, not read code |
ux-review |
gate shipped UI on objective checks in a real browser |
recall |
retrieve what past sessions learned |
After LemonCrow is installed, inspect all savings and missed opportunities in your local session history:
lemoncrow session statsThe report is read-only. It counts wasted tool calls and round-trips in your Claude Code, Codex, and opencode sessions, then shows the associated token, cost, and time opportunity.
lemoncrow session replay plays back a recorded session and, for each native call, runs the real LemonCrow tool that would have replaced it — grep/read loops collapse into one code_search, whole-file reads become budgeted outlines, bash logs get capped. It then estimates — from that session alone — the cost, savings opportunity, and time LemonCrow would have saved. No model re-run, nothing written; opens a shareable HTML page.
lemoncrow session replayWorks on Claude Code, Codex, and opencode sessions. The saving is an estimate; the live re-measured A/B is lc benchmark local.
Measured on the same model, same tasks, and same environment:
| Benchmark | Baseline correct | LemonCrow correct | Correct delta | Baseline cost | LemonCrow cost | Cost delta |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SWE-bench Verified, 50 tasks x 5 reps | 80.8% | 92.8% | +12.0 pp | $234.84 | $165.45 | 29.5% cheaper |
| SWE-bench Lite, 10 tasks x 3 reps | 93.3% | 100% | +6.7 pp | $12.38 | $10.79 | 12.9% cheaper |
| SWE-bench Pro, 10 tasks x 5 reps | 88.0% | 90.0% | +2.0 pp | $39.01 | $30.61 | 21.5% cheaper |
| Exploration tasks across 7 large repos x 5 reps | - | - | - | $19.11 | $6.29 | 67% cheaper |
| Telegraphic Q&A, 20 prompts x 5 reps | - | - | - | $8.93 | $5.34 | 40.2% cheaper |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1, 89 tasks vs public leaderboard* | 78.9% expected | 78.7% | -0.2 pp | $96.76 | $69.52† | 28.1% cheaper† |
* LemonCrow 1 rep/task vs public leaderboard 5-rep average. † 5 timed-out tasks excluded from cost.
SWE-bench Verified detail (250 runs a side) — one-shot search collapses the grep-and-read loop, so turns, wall-clock, and tool calls drop together:
| Metric | Baseline | LemonCrow | Delta |
|---|---|---|---|
| Turns | 6,962 | 4,336 | 37.7% fewer |
| Wall-clock | 14.3h | 10.9h | 23.7% faster |
| Total tool calls | 6,700 | 4,167 | -37.8% |
| Output tokens | 3.04M | 2.19M | 27.9% fewer |
| Bash | 3,327 | 1,785 | -46.3% |
| Read | 1,733 | 1,050 | -39.4% |
| Edit + Write | 1,628 | 759 | -53.4% |
| Search (code_search) | - | 568 | lemoncrow-only |
Exploration detail (7 large repos × 5 reps, read-only Q&A, no edits):
| Tool | Baseline calls | LemonCrow calls | Delta |
|---|---|---|---|
| Read | 672 | 23 | -96.6% |
| Bash | 508 | 71 | -86.0% |
| Search (code_search) | - | 23 | lemoncrow-only |
| Agent + orchestration calls* | 79 | 1 | -98.7% |
| Total tool calls | 1,259 | 118 | -90.6% |
| input | 286,191 | 205,967 | -28.0% |
| cache read | 35,862,919 | 2,753,393 | -92.3% |
| cache write | 2,811,356 | 233,381 | -91.7% |
| output | 426,367 | 68,893 | -83.8% |
| input + cache write | 3,097,547 | 439,348 | -85.8% |
Source: exploration_2026_06_29 · telegraphic_2026_07_08.
The search is the engine: right code in front of the agent on the first try. MRR and first-hit rate (rec@1) across ~7,200 query/gold pairs on 14 repos — 10 tools scored on the identical corpus. LemonCrow's rec@1 of 0.650 means the right code on the very first result two times in three, at 134ms p95:
| Provider | MRR | rec@1 | p95 |
|---|---|---|---|
| LemonCrow +semantic (BGE) | 0.727 | 0.650 | 390ms |
| LemonCrow lexical (default) | 0.676 | 0.582 | 134ms |
| cocoindex-code (best rival) | 0.557 | 0.457 | 595ms |
| serena | 0.401 | 0.359 | 3834ms |
| ripgrep | 0.376 | 0.320 | 66ms |
| universal-ctags (worst rival) | 0.237 | 0.226 | 1ms |
No one had scored these 10 tools against each other on a shared query set before -- each publishes its own number, on its own terms, against its own baseline.
Claude is strong; the loop around it is wasteful — grep, read a whole file, grep again. LemonCrow collapses that loop.
- One-shot search: symbol, callers, and exact ranges in a single call — the biggest source of the turn and wall-clock savings.
- Better inputs: exact file ranges, not whole files.
- Better outputs: compact command output and replies, exact technical facts intact.
- Better memory: context reused, not rediscovered.
- Works with Claude Code, Codex, Copilot, Copilot CLI, and opencode today; Cursor, Hermes Agent, and Antigravity integrations are in progress. Any MCP-compatible agent (LangChain, the OpenAI SDK, Gemini ADK, ...) can connect to the same tools.
- Runs locally by default.
- Open-source runtime (Apache-2.0); the compiled engine (
lemoncrow.pro) is proprietary and required at runtime. - Free account required to activate the official install.
- Live local stats for cost, tokens, and savings; anonymous remote telemetry is on by default (opt out anytime).
- Lite: keeps the savings engine running (cap raised to $200/mo) for $5/month or $50/year.
- Pro: uncapped, plus all gated features (large-repo search, recall, routing, swarm) for $20/month or $200/year.
- Installation
- Troubleshooting
- Benchmarks · full results, backed by docs · every "vs" comparison, with sources
- CLI reference
- Architecture
Open-core. All source published in this repository is Apache-2.0 — free to read, use, modify, and redistribute.
The engine — the lemoncrow.pro package (the retrieval-quality and token-savings core) — is proprietary: it ships only as compiled binaries, its source is not published, and it is required at runtime (without it, LemonCrow falls back to a degraded built-in-only mode). See LICENSE for the exact terms.