CostAffective vs CodeGraph

CodeGraph constructs massive neo4j-like dependency networks in local memories, incurring massive indexing overheads and context bloating. CostAffective utilizes incremental AST scope trees to compress token payloads by up to 45.9%.

Feature Breakdown

Feature Capabilities	CostAffective	CodeGraph
Local AST Scope Extraction	Yes (Tree-sitter)	Yes (Regex-based)
Incremental Index updates	Yes (Watchdog 8ms)	No (Full re-parse)
Token Context Compression	Yes (45.9% reduction)	No (Sends full graph nodes)
Sub-second Indexing	Yes	No (Heavy JVM process)

CostAffective Advantages

•Extremely lightweight SQLite memory footprints.
•Automated client injectors for Cursor & Claude Code.
•Token budget boundaries preventing out-of-context crashes.

CodeGraph Tradeoffs

•Heavy heap allocation on large codebases.
•Requires full re-indexing when structure schema upgrades.
•No cloud sync options (100% local only).

Quality & Token Savings Metrics

Avg Token Cost

685 tokensvs 1,219 tokens

▼ 43.8%

Exploration Calls

43 callsvs 112 calls

▼ 61.6%

Indexing Memory

14MBvs 820MB

▼ 98.2%

Structural Comparison

CostAffective Architecture

A decentralized, standard SQLite key-value mapping file hashes to AST coordinates.

CodeGraph Architecture

A heavy JVM-based graph engine that requires memory-resident graph databases.

CostAffective avoids maintaining active runtime pointer chains. Instead, it relies on fast SQL index searches to retrieve definition locations.

Migration Guide: Moving to CostAffective

Switching is quick. CostAffective integrates into the same Model Context Protocol slots as CodeGraph.

Setup Instructions

Uninstall CodeGraph client configurations from your IDE.
Run the CostAffective universal shell loader command.
Launch the auto-injector tool using `costaffective install --all`.

// BEFORE (CodeGraph)

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "codegraph-mcp": {
      "command": "docker",
      "args": ["run", "-i", "codegraph/server"]
    }
  }
}

// AFTER (CostAffective)

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "costaffective": {
      "command": "costaffective",
      "args": ["serve"]
    }
  }
}