`search_code` returns too verbose payloads

[localconst]

Currently, the search_code tool, in addition to returning search results, also includes Git items with the entire file content.

Here:

azure-devops-mcp/src/tools/search.ts

Line 74 in 1546081

const combinedResults = await fetchCombinedResults(resultJson.results ?? [], gitApi);

This makes the output too verbose for agents and can significantly impact performance, especially in large repositories when many large files are matched.

I propose 2 options to reduce the size of the payloads returned by this tool:

Option 1, simple

Add a new flag to the search_code to control whether to include Git items with full content.

• If it's OFF - don't call the fetchCombinedResults
• This allows agents to choose between full details or only search results.
• If needed, they can make a follow-up call using other tool to retrieve the full Git item content.
• It can be named somehow like includeGitItems
• IMHO, should be off by default.

Option 2, more advanced

I see that few fields are duplicated in search results and git items, so they can be merged together:

• results.contentId == gitItem.objectId
• gitItem.commitId already exists in search result, so no need to duplicate it.
• file paths

For files content, we can add a new argument includeFilesContent to control whether to include file content in the response.
And we can remap the gitItem.content field to object with lengh and data fields:

• if includeFilesContent is OFF, then only content length will be returned, so agent can decide whether it's worth to fetch data separately.
• if ON, the data field will contain the full file content. Same as for now, but also including content's length.

This option allows us to keep all useful metadata but reduce payload

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Please share your thoughts about this. Thanks!

P.S.
I’m not sure if TFVC supports code search, as I don’t use it. If yes, will these Git item calls always fail for TFVC repos?

[skmanoj]

We are working on a solution in this case, we will keep you posted with the updates.