Call-sequence analysis — why read savings don't convert to wall-clock

Date: 2026-05-23 · Branch: architectural-improvements · Source data: the surviving stream-json logs from the A/B matrix (/tmp/ab-matrix/<Cell>/run-headless-{with,without}.jsonl, 37 cells × 2 arms). Re-mined — no re-runs — with scripts/agent-eval/seq-matrix.mjs.

Why this exists

The A/B matrix showed codegraph cuts reads 75% but wall-clock only ~16%, and 63% of the wall-clock win comes from just 3 large-repo cells. Reads are at the floor (~0), so the remaining wall-clock is round-trips + the synthesis turn — neither of which read count can explain. The matrix records tool counts, not the call sequence or per-call payload size. This analysis recovers both, to find where the wall-clock actually goes.

TL;DR — the bottleneck is trace ADOPTION, not trace completeness

Trace is called in 3 of 37 cells — even though every question is a canonical flow question ("trace the controller → service → repository", "how does X reach Y"). The agent overwhelmingly reaches for context → search → search → explore instead — the exact path-reconstruction anti-pattern the instructions tell it to avoid.
explore averages 17.9K chars/call; trace averages 0.8K — a 22× payload difference. The path-scoped tool that solves the small-repo-bloat problem exists and is tiny. It's just not being invoked.
Small repos still get bloated payloads because of the explore-default: a 6-file repo (flutter_module_books) pulls 17.4K; a 10-file repo pulls 18.0K. This is precisely the "too much context on small codebases" failure mode — happening right now, via explore.
Round-trips are 25% fewer with codegraph (283 vs 375 turns) but wall-clock is only 16% faster — because the with-arm's turns each carry a ~18K explore payload, inflating TTFT and eroding the turn savings.
Root cause: src/mcp/server-instructions.ts leads with "answer directly … codegraph_context first, then ONE codegraph_explore" as the headline pattern. The trace-first guidance is buried in a table + a chain list below it. Agents anchor on the prominent headline → context→explore.

Decision: the next experiment is trace-first steering / adoption, not enriching trace. We can't evaluate trace's completeness when it's used 3/37 times. Get adoption up first, then measure whether the residual node/explore follow-ups need a richer trace.

Finding 1 — trace adoption: 3/37

metric	value
flow-question cells	37 (all of them)
cells that called `codegraph_trace`	3 (`cpp-leveldb`, `excalidraw`, `c-redis`)
dominant pattern instead	`context` → `search`×N → `explore`

The 3 trace cells, and what followed the trace call:

repo	files	cg sequence	turns (with/without)
cpp-leveldb	134	`trace, node, node`	5 / 8
excalidraw	643	`context, trace, trace, explore`	6 / 19
c-redis	884	`context, trace, explore, node`	10 / 15

Even when trace is used, the agent follows it with node/explore to fetch bodies — so a secondary lever (after adoption) is making one trace call self-sufficient enough to kill those follow-ups. But that's step 2.

Finding 2 — payload size: path-scoped trace (0.8K) vs breadth-scoped explore (17.9K)

Across all cells, per codegraph tool — call count and average payload per call:

tool	calls	avg/call	total
`explore`	32	17.9K	573K
`context`	36	4.3K	156K
`search`	39	1.3K	50K
`files`	5	3.4K	17K
`node`	19	2.0K	38K
`trace`	4	0.8K	3.4K

context (used in 36/37 cells) is the default opener; explore is the default closer. Together they are the ~22K breadth dump. trace — the tool that would replace that with the actual path — is 22× smaller and barely used. This is the user's premise confirmed in numbers: explore is breadth-scoped (returns the neighborhood), trace is path-scoped (returns the line).

Finding 3 — payload grows with repo size, and over-returns on small repos

With-arm total codegraph payload by repo-size tier:

tier	cells	avg total payload	range
S (<200 files)	19	12.7K	3.0–31.2K
M (<2000)	9	32.4K	5.4–58.2K
L (≥2000)	9	34.0K	20.2–43.1K

The small-repo waste is concrete — these all have a 2–3 file flow but pull a full neighborhood:

repo	files	with-arm payload	sequence
flutter_module_books	6	17.4K	`context, explore`
computer-database	10	18.0K	`context, search, status, explore`
aspnet-realworld	78	22.2K	`context, explore`
django-realworld	44	14.8K	`context, explore`

explore's per-call budget is already adaptive (#185), but it doesn't help here because the agent isn't choosing the path-scoped tool — it's choosing breadth.

Finding 4 — round-trips, and the ToolSearch tax

metric	with	without
total turns (37 cells)	283	375
avg turns / cell	7.6	10.1

25% fewer turns, but only ~16% faster wall-clock — the gap is the per-turn cost of the big explore payloads. Also: every with-arm run opens with a ToolSearch round-trip (MCP tools are deferred in this harness), a fixed 1-turn tax before any codegraph call. Worth confirming whether the production install defers codegraph tools the same way.

Conclusion → the experiment to run next

Measure-first changed the plan. The hypothesis was "enrich trace so one call is self-sufficient." The data says trace is used 3/37 times, so completeness is moot until adoption is fixed.

Experiment: trace-first steering A/B.

Change: rewrite the server-instructions.ts headline so a flow question (how does X reach Y / trace / from→to) routes to codegraph_trace first, demoting the context→explore pattern to non-flow/onboarding questions. Mirror into instructions-template.ts + .cursor/rules/codegraph.mdc.
Metric: trace-adoption rate (target ≫ 3/37), with-arm total payload (expect ↓ sharply, especially small repos), turns (expect ↓), wall-clock (expect the 16% gap to widen toward the 25% turn gap as 18K explore payloads are replaced by <1K traces).
Control: a non-flow "what's the deal with module X" question must still go context→explore — don't over-steer everything to trace.
Then, step 2: with adoption up, measure the node/explore follow-ups after trace (cpp-leveldb/excalidraw/c-redis all had them). If they're frequent, enrich trace (per-hop body snippet, capped per hop) so one trace call ends the flow investigation.

Reproduce

node scripts/agent-eval/seq-matrix.mjs            # regenerates every table above from /tmp/ab-matrix

Ablation experiment — do `context`, `explore`, and `trace` compete? Is `trace` enough?

Date: 2026-05-23 · 52 runs, ~$20. Tool surface trimmed server-side via the new CODEGRAPH_MCP_TOOLS allowlist (so an ablated tool is genuinely absent from ListTools, not denied-on-call); trace-first steering injected with --append-system-prompt. 6 repos (2 S / 2 M / 2 L) × 2 runs; arm E is a non-flow survey question on 2 repos. Driver arms-matrix.sh, analysis parse-arms.mjs.

arm	tools	steering	adoption	reads	cgOut	turns	dur
A control	all	none	2/12	1.25	28.8K	7.6	38s
B steer	all	trace-first	8/12	1.00	32.0K	7.9	43s
C no-explore	hide explore	trace-first	8/12	2.08	9.2K	9.0	44s
D trace-centric	hide explore+context	trace-first	8/12	2.00	6.6K	10.5	46s
E control-probe	hide explore+context	trace-first	0/4	2.50	27.8K	20.0	72s

What it says

Steering works for adoption, not for payload. B lifted trace use 2/12 → 8/12 (and 4/4 on the genuinely path-shaped questions — the 2 non-adopters, flutter "what widgets" and vapor "name the route", aren't from→to questions). But B's payload (32.0K) is bigger than control (28.8K) and it's slightly slower — because the agent calls trace and still calls explore. Steering adds a trace hop without displacing the explore dump.
explore is the payload, and it's load-bearing — but 3–5× too heavy. Removing it (C) cuts payload 71% (32K→9.2K) — confirming it's the bloat. But reads double (1.0→2.1) and turns rise: the agent Reads files to recover the bodies explore had inlined. So explore isn't redundant; it's the only one-call body-supplier, just delivered with a 32K sledgehammer.
context is the most redundant of the three — as a body-supplier. Removing it on top of explore (D vs C) left reads flat (2.08→2.00) but raised turns (9.0→10.5). It supplies no unique bodies; it earns its keep only as a round-trip-saver (the composed orient call).
Removing tools makes flow questions SLOWER, not faster. Turns climb monotonically A→D (7.6→10.5) and duration with them — the Read + trace-follow-up round-trips cost more wall-clock than the saved payload. Leaner payload ≠ faster.
trace is definitively NOT sufficient. The non-flow probe (E) thrashed without the survey tools — 20 turns, 72s reconstructing an overview from search/node/files. Survey questions need a survey tool; trace can't substitute.

Verdict on the three design questions

Do we need all three? Yes — but for different reasons. trace = flow tool (real, under-adopted). explore = the one-call body-supplier (load-bearing, over-heavy). context = round-trip-saving opener (redundant for bodies, useful for orientation).
Are they competing? Yes: explore competes with trace and wins by default — even when steered, the agent traces and explores, so the payload win never lands until explore is displaced.
Could trace be all we need? No. E rules it out for non-flow questions; C/D rule it out even for flow (reads double without explore's bodies).

Three cheap fixes are now ruled out by data: "trace is all we need" (false), "just steer to trace" (B: slower + bigger than control), and "remove explore" (C/D: more reads/turns, slower).

The fix the data points to → next experiment

The only path that wins: make trace self-sufficient by inlining per-hop bodies (capped per hop → still path-scoped) so one trace call supplies what explore does and what the Read fallback recovers — displacing both for flow questions. Keep one survey tool (context; demote explore to deep-survey, not the flow default) for the non-flow class E proved is load-bearing.

Experiment: enriched body-inlining trace + steering vs control.
Target: C/D's lean payload (~7–9K, not 32K) without C/D's extra reads/turns, and beat A on wall-clock (the bar B/C/D all failed).
Metric: payload, reads (must stay ≈ A's ~1.0, not rise to 2.0), turns, duration.

Reproduce (ablation)

bash scripts/agent-eval/arms-matrix.sh     # 52 runs into /tmp/arms (RUNS=2 default)
node scripts/agent-eval/parse-arms.mjs     # the arm-comparison tables above

Validation — body-inlining trace (arm F)

The ablation pointed to one fix: make trace self-sufficient by inlining per-hop bodies (capped per hop → still path-scoped) so one trace call displaces both the explore dump and the Read fallback. Implemented in handleTrace (sourceRangeAt, 28 lines / 1200 chars per hop, with a … (+N more lines) marker). Arm F = arm B's surface (all tools + trace-first steering) run on the body-inlining build, so F vs B isolates the enrichment.

arm	adoption	reads	cgOut	turns	dur	cost
A all/none	2/12	1.25	28.8K	7.6	38s	$0.390
B all/steer (thin trace)	8/12	1.00	32.0K	7.9	43s	$0.411
F all/steer (body trace)	5/12	1.17	25.1K	6.8	37s	$0.348
C no-explore	8/12	2.08	9.2K	9.0	44s	$0.356
D trace-centric	8/12	2.00	6.6K	10.5	46s	$0.368

F is the best-balanced arm: lowest turns (6.8), fastest (37s), cheapest, payload leaner than A/B — and it hits the target the ablation set: C/D-class efficiency without C/D's Read penalty (F reads 1.17 vs C/D's ~2.0). It gets there not by removing a tool but by giving the agent a complete trace so it stops early.

The win is clearest where trace connects — excalidraw (the validated 6-hop path):

arm	sequence	turns	reads	dur
B (thin)	`trace → context → explore → Grep → Read`	7	1	47s
F (body) r1	`trace → context`	4	0	31s
F (body) r2	`trace → trace → explore`	5	0	42s

The body-trace ended the investigation in trace → context (run 1) — 0 reads, 0 grep, 0 explore.

Connectivity is the cap. On flows that break at unbridged dynamic dispatch — aspnet-realworld (MediatR _mediator.Send → Handle), vapor-spi (closure routing) — trace returns "no path" and the agent falls back to explore, so F ≈ B (no regression, no gain). F's aggregate lift is therefore gated by dynamic-dispatch coverage: the more flows the graph connects end-to-end, the more often the self-sufficient trace fires. (n=2/arm — adoption and per-repo numbers are noisy; excalidraw and spring-halo, the connecting repos, are 2/2 trace in both B and F.)

Verdict & ship list

Ship the body-inlining trace — strict improvement (best-balanced arm; clean 0-read/4-turn win on connecting traces; no regression on non-connecting ones).
Strengthen the steering. Arm A (shipped server-instructions, which already say "trace first for flow") adopted trace only 2/12 — the guidance is too buried. The explicit --append-system-prompt used in B–F lifted it. Port that into server-instructions.ts + instructions-template.ts + .cursor/rules/codegraph.mdc (house rule: all three together), flow-gated so non-flow survey questions still go context/explore (arm E proved they must).
Next frontier to widen F's reach: bridge more dynamic dispatch (MediatR/.NET, Vapor routing) — every newly-connected flow converts an F≈B repo into an F-win repo.

Reproduce (arm F)

bash scripts/agent-eval/arms-F.sh          # 12 runs (RUNS=2); needs the body-inlining build
node scripts/agent-eval/parse-arms.mjs     # F appears alongside A/B/C/D/E

Steering port — the negative result (arm G)

F's win used --append-system-prompt, which real users don't get. Arm G = arm A's invocation (NO append-prompt) on a build where the steering was ported into the production channels (server-instructions.ts + the context/trace tool descriptions + instructions-template.ts + .cursor/rules). Three wording iterations, 12 runs each:

arm	adoption	reads	payload	turns	dur
A (shipped instructions)	2/12	1.25	28.8K	7.6	38s
F (body-trace + append-prompt)	5/12	1.17	25.1K	6.8	37s
G v1 — anti-explore wording	6/12	2.08	13.8K	8.8	46s
G v2 — restore explore as fallback	6/12	1.67	22.0K	7.8	46s
G v3 — restore context as opener	6/12	2.08	11.7K	8.9	46s

Production-instruction steering does not reproduce F, and regresses the A baseline. All three G variants pin at ~46s (slower than A's 38s and F's 37s) with reads at 1.7–2.1 (vs A 1.25, F 1.17). Wording only shuffled the slack between Read and explore — v1 suppressed explore → Read; v2/v3 restored explore → over-investigation — never landing F's lean trace → context.

Two root causes:

Salience. The same trace-first wording works as a top-of-prompt --append-system-prompt (F) but not as an MCP initialize instruction / tool description (G). An MCP server has no higher-salience channel — this is an architectural limit, not a wording bug.
Forcing trace-first backfires where trace doesn't connect. Steering pushed trace onto MediatR (_mediator.Send) and Spring interface-DI (@Autowired iface → impl) flows, where trace returns no-path; the forced trace is then a wasted round-trip before the fallback → slower. The unsteered agent (A) is better-calibrated: it traces only when trace will obviously connect (2/12) and explores otherwise.

Arm H — body-trace alone (the ship candidate) regresses

The clean ship test: body-inlining trace + ORIGINAL instructions + no steering (= A's invocation, only the trace tool changed). H vs A isolates the body-trace feature with nothing else moving.

arm	adoption	reads	payload	turns	dur
A (no body-trace)	2/12	1.25	28.8K	7.6	38s
H (body-trace, no steering)	3/12	1.50	29.7K	8.0	45s
F (body-trace + append-prompt)	5/12	1.17	25.1K	6.8	37s

Body-trace alone does NOT beat A — it mildly regresses (45s vs 38s). The sequences show why: unsteered, the agent treats trace as just one more call in its usual loop — excalidraw H was context → trace → explore → node×3 → Grep → Read (77s) — so the bigger body-trace payload is pure added cost, not offset by fewer follow-ups. The body-trace only pays off when the agent leads with trace and stops after it, which only the append-prompt (F) achieved.

Final verdict

The body-inlining trace is a real win (F) but its value is entirely contingent on lead-with-and-stop-after-trace steering we cannot deliver through any production MCP channel (append-prompt salience ≫ server-instructions / tool-descriptions; G failed three times). On its own (H) it regresses. So:

SHIP: the CODEGRAPH_MCP_TOOLS allowlist — independent, clean, validated.
DON'T ship the body-inlining trace or the steering as-is — measured neutral-to-negative without a steering channel we don't have.
The real lever is connectivity, not steering — trace earns its keep only when flows connect end-to-end; dynamic-dispatch synthesizers (MediatR/.NET, Spring interface-DI, Vapor closures) help the unsteered agent, which already traces when trace will connect.
One untested lever to rescue the body-trace: steer via the trace tool's OWN OUTPUT (the highest-salience channel — the agent reads it fresh, right at the decision point) with a strong leading "complete flow — answer from this, don't explore" banner. Instructions/descriptions are too far from the action; the tool result is not. Unproven; the only remaining shot at making the body-trace pay off in production.

measure-first paid off three times: it killed three cheap fixes in the ablation, stopped a steering change that would have shipped an ~8s/query regression (G), and stopped shipping the body-trace itself on a confounded assumption (H showed it needs steering we can't deliver).

Reproduce (arm G)

ARM=G bash scripts/agent-eval/arms-F.sh    # production-instruction steering, no append-prompt
node scripts/agent-eval/parse-arms.mjs

Arm I — sufficiency, not steering (the shippable win)

An LLM stops investigating when its context is sufficient, not when it's told to stop. So arm I makes the trace OUTPUT complete instead of steering — same invocation as H (original instructions, no steering), only the trace tool changed:

Hop bodies no longer clipped at 28 lines (that clip is why H re-fetched mutateElement).
The destination's own callees are inlined — the "last mile" the agent otherwise explores/Reads for (excalidraw: renderStaticScene → _renderStaticScene / renderStaticSceneThrottled).

arm	adoption	reads	greps	payload	turns	dur	cost
A baseline	2/12	1.25	1.17	28.8K	7.6	38s	$0.390
H body-trace alone	3/12	1.50	0.42	29.7K	8.0	45s	$0.398
I body-trace + dest callees	2/12	1.17	0.25	27.2K	7.0	39s	$0.359
F body-trace + append-steer	5/12	1.17	0.17	25.1K	6.8	37s	$0.348

I ≥ A on every axis (reads, greps, turns, cost down; wall-clock flat) and ≈ F on outcomes with zero steering — despite lower trace adoption (2/12 vs F's 5/12). The destination-callees fix turned the body-trace from a net-negative (H, 45s) into a net-positive (I, 39s): one richer trace call now displaces the explore+node+Read follow-ups it used to trigger. excalidraw I-r2 was context → trace → explore — 0 reads, 5 turns, stopped because the data was present. The residual reads (I-r1) are the canvasNonce data-flow — the def-use frontier the graph deliberately omits.

This confirms the thesis: completeness stops the agent; steering doesn't. Every steering arm (B/F append-prompt, G instructions) was either unshippable or a regression; the sufficiency arm (I) ships and needs no steering.

Revised final verdict (supersedes the arm-G/H verdict above)

SHIP: body-inlining trace + destination callees (arm I) — ≥ A on all axes, no steering, no regression; makes the self-sufficient-trace property real (one trace call answers the flow).
SHIP: the CODEGRAPH_MCP_TOOLS allowlist — independent, validated.
DON'T ship steering (instructions or tool descriptions) — three variants regressed; MCP can't deliver append-prompt salience, and forcing trace where it doesn't connect backfires.
Connectivity is the multiplier — arm I helps most where the trace connects; MediatR/.NET, Spring interface-DI, and Vapor closures are the next synthesizers, and they help the unsteered agent (which already traces when trace will connect).

Reproduce (arm I)

ARM=I bash scripts/agent-eval/arms-F.sh    # body-trace + destination callees, no steering
node scripts/agent-eval/parse-arms.mjs

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