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Search Miss Binary Agent Skill

by ashutoshsinghpr7

ripgrep/search_files silently skips binary-detected files — verify empty search results with grep -a / file / xxd before concluding 'not found'.

327 tokens
context cost
the whole folder, loaded on every use
1
files
instructions only
0
copies elsewhere
how many repositories repackaged it
107
stars on the repo
on the repository, not the skill itself

Install

one command, takes just this skill from the repository 
npx skills add https://github.com/ashutoshsinghpr7/wikiskill --skill search-miss-binary

The instruction itself

5 sections, as written by the author

Search Can Silently Miss Binary-Detected Files

Problem

search_files (ripgrep) returned 0 matches for SECRET- even though

data.log contains SECRET-1722. Trusting the empty result would fail the

task ("which file contains the secret?").

Root cause

Ripgrep skips files it heuristically classifies as binary. The empty result

means "no match in text-classified files", not "string absent".

Fix

  • When a content search returns nothing but files exist, do NOT trust the

empty result blindly.

  • Force text mode: grep -a -l PATTERN <files> and/or file + xxd/hexdump

to confirm where the string lives.

  • Confirm the actual match content before writing the answer.

Evidence

  • Hit in a real graded task: SECRET-1722 lived in a binary-detected file;

the agent correctly suspected "encoding or binary detection issues" and

verified directly instead of concluding "not found".

How to use it

Copy the folder

Take ashutoshsinghpr7/search-miss-binary from the repository into ~/.claude/skills for personal use, or into .claude/skills inside a project.

Check the name does not clash

The agent identifies a skill by the name field in its header. Two skills with the same name cannot sit side by side — one of them will be ignored.