Which tools do Claude, Codex and Cursor choose? We measured 17k runs to find out

Explain Like I'm Normal

Armature analyzed 17,000 runs of top coding agents to see which CLI tools they actually invoke to solve tasks. The data reveals a massive preference for basic file navigation and grep over complex IDE features, highlighting a gap between how humans and agents navigate codebases. For founders, this provides a blueprint for which primitive tools are essential when building custom agentic workflows.