If you mention the silver searcher (ag), you gotta mention the platinum searcher (pt) :)

https://github.com/monochromegane/the_platinum_searcher

Since it's pure Go, there's your static binary which makes it easily deployable again.

If you mention ack, ag, and pt, you also have to mention ripgrep (rg) https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep which has the usability features of the newer grep-alikes but is as fast or faster than gnu grep.

What is the difference between ack and ag? I use ag a lot, and it seems, on web, whenever ag is mentioned, ack is also somewhere in vicinity (or vice-versa).

ag is faster ack is simpler and more OG