Member-only story
Skip the token-multiple arms race entirely and pick a knowledge-graph tool the way you’d pick a database.
Every Graphify post you’ve read leads with a number: 71x fewer tokens. Here’s the number nobody leads with: for a 40-file side project, the graph took longer to build than the bug it was supposed to help you find. The real question practitioners should be asking isn’t “how much does this save” — it’s “does my team even have the problem this solves.”
This piece gives you a decision framework instead of another benchmark screenshot. By the end, you’ll know which tool fits your situation — or whether you should skip this category entirely and stick with plain agentic grep.
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Table of Contents #
· The 71x Number Is Real, and It’s Also the Wrong Number to Optimize For
· [What These Tools Actually Do (the 60-Second Version)](#d36d)
· [Why This Category Exploded in One Quarter](#d21f)
· [The Three Variables That Actually Decide Your Pick](#380d)
∘ [1. Codebase size and](#ee54)…