codedb MCP server

Your agent has a task. Somewhere in your repository are the definition it needs, the caller that explains it, and the test that keeps it honest. codedb draws the map: focused source context, symbols, callers, outlines, and dependencies. Your coding client uses its own native tools to make the edit.

A context engine, not an editor. codedb has no edit capability. Use it with Graff, Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, Cursor, Windsurf, Devin, oh-my-pi, Hermes, Qwen Code, ZCode, Trae, Cline, Copilot CLI, Antigravity, Kiro, OpenCode, or another MCP client.

🧭 Give your agent a compass

Ask your agent…	codedb helps it…
“Where does session refresh happen?”	Find relevant files and source excerpts with codedb_context
“Explain this function and who uses it.”	Read the definition and callers with codedb_explain
“How does this request reach the database?”	Trace a chain between symbols with codedb_callpath
“What's in this part of the repo?”	Browse with codedb_list_dir and inspect file outlines

Structural search runs locally. Default hybrid retrieval also uses hosted embeddings; choose semantic=local for local-only retrieval. See Data & Privacy for what each mode sends and stores.

⚡ Install

macOS and Linux

curl -fsSL https://codedb.codegraff.com/install.sh | bash

Downloads the binary for your platform and auto-registers codedb as an MCP server in Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, Cursor, Windsurf, Devin, oh-my-pi, Hermes, Qwen Code, ZCode, Trae, Cline, Copilot CLI, Antigravity, Kiro, and OpenCode — each written directly and additively into that tool's config (only when the tool is present). The installer prints the exact codedb mcp command it registered plus hook setup pointers for Codex and Claude Code.

On Windows, run this command inside WSL only if you want the Linux binary inside WSL. For the native Windows binary, use PowerShell below.

Windows

Run in PowerShell:

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/justrach/codedb/v0.2.5841/install/install.ps1 | iex

Run the same command again to update codedb.

npm/npx on macOS and Linux

npx -y codedeebee mcp

Or install globally:

npm install -g codedeebee
codedb mcp

The npm package is named codedeebee (the bare codedb name is restricted on npm); it ships a thin launcher that downloads the matching native binary from GitHub Releases on postinstall and verifies the SHA256 checksum. The installed CLI is still called codedb.

The launcher already knows how to fetch codedb-windows-x86_64.exe, but the currently published codedeebee predates that release asset, so npx -y codedeebee mcp does not work on Windows yet — it becomes available with the next published release. Use the PowerShell installer above until then.

Useful for MCP clients (Claude Code, Cursor, opencode, Claude Desktop) that already use npx:

{
  "codedb": {
    "type": "local",
    "command": ["npx", "-y", "codedeebee"],
    "args": ["mcp"],
    "enabled": true
  }
}

Updating or repairing an older install

On macOS or Linux, if codedb update fails on an older release, rerun the installer:

curl -fsSL https://codedb.codegraff.com/install.sh | bash

This replaces the codedb binary with the latest GitHub Release and keeps your existing MCP registrations, config, caches, and snapshots. Use this path for any release whose built-in updater cannot fetch release checksums.

Self-update works on native Windows from 0.2.5833 onward (codedb update). On older builds, rerun the PowerShell installer above to update or repair the binary.

🪟 Use codedb in Harness

Harness is a free desktop app for macOS and Windows that runs Graff, Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and your other coding agents in one window, with each session's files, browser, and terminal beside it. The agents you run there use their usual MCP configuration, so the codedb registration from the installer carries over: install codedb once, and every agent in Harness can use the map.

An iPhone and iPad app for following and steering those sessions is in development. Join the waitlist.

🌱 Project status

Alpha: APIs and snapshot formats can change. The core speaks JSON-RPC 2.0 over stdio, with an optional localhost HTTP server.

• Parsers: Zig, C/C++, Python, TypeScript/JavaScript, Rust, Go, PHP, Ruby, HCL, R, Dart/Flutter, and OCaml; more languages have lightweight outlines.
• Navigation: task context, symbol definitions, callers, dependency graphs, trigram search, and portable snapshots.
• Live updates: recursive macOS events on local APFS/HFS volumes; bounded OS watches and periodic content verification on fallback paths. Each MCP process owns its watcher; multiple clients can multiply background work.
• Distribution: macOS, Linux, and Windows binaries; SHA256-verified downloads. macOS releases are signed and notarized.

Documentation

• MCP setup — per-client configurations (Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code, Claude Code, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI, oh-my-pi, Hermes, Qwen Code, ZCode, Trae, Cline, Copilot CLI, Antigravity, Kiro, OpenCode), root resolution, troubleshooting
• Skill base & context files — agents.md / CLAUDE.md / GEMINI.md, .codedbrc, per-developer memory
• CLI reference — every command, every flag
• Architecture — engine internals, index layout
• Benchmarks — micro-benchmarks + agentic-eval results vs codegraph, FTS5, lean-ctx
• Raspberry Pi 4 — full-performance ARM64 setup, Cortex-A72 build, and on-device benchmark
• Zig 0.17.0-dev migration guide — repeatable zigup workflow and API change recipes

Platform	Binary	Signed
macOS ARM64 (Apple Silicon)	codedb-darwin-arm64	✅ codesigned + notarized
macOS x86_64 (Intel)	codedb-darwin-x86_64	codesigned + notarized (0.2.5833+)
Linux ARM64	codedb-linux-arm64	—
Linux x86_64	codedb-linux-x86_64	—
Windows x86_64	codedb-windows-x86_64.exe	SHA256 verified automatically

Or install manually from GitHub Releases. Always verify the binary against the attached checksums.sha256 before running it.

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⚡ Quick Start

As an MCP server (recommended)

The macOS/Linux shell installer registers codedb automatically. For npm/npx installs on macOS/Linux and manual Windows installs, use the MCP configuration above or the client-specific examples in docs/mcp.md. Then open a project and codedb’s tools are available to your AI agent.

# Manual MCP start (auto-configured by install script)
codedb mcp /path/to/your/project

For clients that open many unused MCP sessions (for example, one per worktree), try experimental lazy MCP startup with CODEDB_LAZY_MCP=1. Indexing starts on the first code request; eager startup remains the default.

As an HTTP server

codedb serve /path/to/your/project
# listening on localhost:7719

CLI

codedb tree /path/to/project          # file tree with symbol counts
codedb outline src/main.zig           # symbols in a file
codedb find AgentRegistry             # find symbol definitions
codedb search "handleAuth"            # full-text search (trigram-accelerated)
codedb word Store                     # exact word lookup (inverted index, O(1))
codedb hot                            # recently modified files

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🔧 MCP Tools

Tools over the Model Context Protocol (JSON-RPC 2.0 over stdio). Agents see five one-shots by default (context, explain, callpath, list_dir, status). codedb's job is to give agents context — not to be your editor. codedb has no edit tool; use your client's native edit tools.

Tool	Description
codedb_tree	Full file tree with language, line counts, symbol counts
codedb_outline	Symbols in a file: functions, structs, imports, with line numbers
codedb_symbol	Find where a symbol is defined across the codebase
codedb_search	Trigram-accelerated full-text search (supports regex, scoped results)
codedb_word	O(1) inverted index word lookup
codedb_callers	Every call site of a symbol — word index ∩ outline scope, in one round-trip
codedb_explain	Definition body + callers in one call (CLI aliases: explain, around)
codedb_callpath	Shortest resolved call chain A→B (CLI alias: path); duplicate names list candidates—pass from_path / to_path (or CLI --from-path / --to-path) to select a file
codedb_context	Task-shaped composer — Pareto-frontier hybrid retrieval by default: local BM25/symbol retrieval first, then local ANN search using a remote task embedding plus a fixed public calibration string when an explicit sidecar exists, or a bounded transient semantic rerank otherwise. Pass semantic=local for an on-device-only call. format=json adds typed provenance and retrieval-privacy metadata; document_hops=1..2 expands linked Markdown
codedb_hot	Most recently modified files
codedb_deps	Typed dependency graph: imports by default, or Markdown links with edge_type=documents; document traversal is capped at 2 hops / 64 files
codedb_read	Read file content (line ranges, if_hash skip-unchanged, compact mode)
codedb_changes	Changed files since a sequence number
codedb_status	Index status (file count, current sequence, scan phase)
codedb_snapshot	Full pre-rendered JSON snapshot of the codebase
codedb_projects	List all locally indexed projects on this machine
codedb_index	Index a local folder and write codedb.snapshot
codedb_find	Fuzzy file-name search (typo-tolerant subsequence match against indexed paths — not a content/symbol search)
codedb_glob	Match indexed paths against a glob pattern (src/**/*.zig, *.md, …)
codedb_ls	List immediate children of a directory — dirs first, then files with language + counts
codedb_list_dir	Live BFS folder listing (gitignore, 10k cap) — works without an index
codedb_query	Composable pipeline — chain find, search, filter, deps, outline, read, sort, limit in one request

codedb_context accepts max_tokens as a conservative approximate response budget. Compact evidence is admitted progressively; when the remaining evidence does not fit, the response reports the omission once instead of overflowing the request with lower-priority sections.

MCP responses are plain text by default, without ANSI styling. Set CODEDB_MCP_ANSI=1 in the MCP server environment to opt into ANSI-colored summary and guidance blocks for clients that render terminal colors.

Tool profile: agent harnesses default to mini — five one-shot tools (context, explain, callpath, list_dir, status). Hop tools stay callable; they are not advertised. CODEDB_TOOLS_PROFILE=core is the older 10-tool navigation set; slim is the terse hop six; full advertises everything. GUI clients that emit rich blocks still get full unless the env var is set.

Public repos — DeepWiki (remote MCP)

codedb indexes your checked-out code. For questions about public GitHub repos, the installer registers DeepWiki (https://mcp.deepwiki.com/mcp — free, no auth) as a separate remote MCP server in each detected client, with tools read_wiki_structure, read_wiki_contents, and ask_question. Opt out at install time with CODEDB_INSTALL_DEEPWIKI=0. (The old codedb_remote tool backed by api.wiki.codes was removed; DeepWiki replaces that role.)

CLI Commands

Command	Description
codedb tree	Show file tree with language and symbol counts
codedb outline <path>	List all symbols in a file
codedb find <name>	Find where a symbol is defined
codedb search <query>	Full-text search (trigram, case-insensitive)
codedb search --regex <pattern>	Regex search
codedb word <identifier>	Exact word lookup via inverted index
codedb read <path>	Read file contents (supports -L FROM-TO, --compact)
codedb hot	Recently modified files
codedb reindex	Force a fresh filesystem scan, rebuild all local indexes, and refresh the live daemon
codedb snapshot	Write codedb.snapshot to project root
codedb serve	HTTP daemon on :7719
codedb mcp [path]	JSON-RPC/MCP server over stdio
codedb update	Self-update to the latest release; older builds can be repaired with the installer
codedb nuke	Uninstall codedb, remove caches/snapshots, and deregister MCP integrations
codedb --version	Print version

Options: --no-telemetry (or set CODEDB_NO_TELEMETRY env var)

Claude Code hook opt-out: the installer registers a PreToolUse hook that nudges agents from grep/cat to codedb inside indexed repos. CODEDB_NO_HOOKS=1 skips it for that run only (it is never persisted from the environment, so a transient export can't be promoted to a permanent opt-out by the background auto-updater). To make it permanent, run the installer with CODEDB_PERSIST_NO_HOOKS=1 or touch ~/.codedb/no-hooks; rm ~/.codedb/no-hooks re-enables it. Deleting the hook entry from ~/.claude/settings.json is also permanent — the installer records its registrations and treats a missing entry as a deliberate removal (it writes ~/.codedb/no-hooks for you, so rm that file to undo).

Example: agent explores a codebase

# 1. Get the file tree
curl localhost:7719/tree
# → src/main.zig      (zig, 55L, 4 symbols)
#   src/store.zig     (zig, 156L, 12 symbols)
#   src/agent.zig     (zig, 135L, 8 symbols)

# 2. Drill into a file
curl "localhost:7719/outline?path=src/store.zig"
# → L20: struct_def Store
#   L30: function init
#   L55: function recordSnapshot

# 3. Find a symbol across the codebase
curl "localhost:7719/symbol?name=AgentRegistry"
# → {"path":"src/agent.zig","line":30,"kind":"struct_def"}

# 4. Full-text search
curl "localhost:7719/search?q=handleAuth&max=10"

# 5. Check what changed
curl "localhost:7719/changes?since=42"

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📊 Benchmarks

Measured on Apple M4 Pro, 48GB RAM. MCP = pre-indexed warm queries (20 iterations avg). CLI/external tools include process startup (3 iterations avg). Ground truth verified against Python reference implementation.

Latency — codedb MCP vs codedb CLI vs ast-grep vs ripgrep vs grep

codedb repo (20 files, 12.6k lines):

Query	codedb MCP	codedb CLI	ast-grep	ripgrep	grep	MCP speedup
File tree	0.04 ms	52.9 ms	—	—	—	1,253x vs CLI
Symbol search (init)	0.10 ms	54.1 ms	3.2 ms	6.3 ms	6.5 ms	549x vs CLI
Full-text search (allocator)	0.05 ms	60.7 ms	3.2 ms	5.3 ms	6.6 ms	1,340x vs CLI
Word index (self)	0.04 ms	59.7 ms	n/a	7.2 ms	6.5 ms	1,404x vs CLI
Structural outline	0.05 ms	53.5 ms	3.1 ms	—	2.4 ms	1,143x vs CLI
Dependency graph	0.05 ms	2.2 ms	n/a	n/a	n/a	45x vs CLI

merjs repo (100 files, 17.3k lines):

Query	codedb MCP	codedb CLI	ast-grep	ripgrep	grep	MCP speedup
File tree	0.05 ms	54.0 ms	—	—	—	1,173x vs CLI
Symbol search (init)	0.07 ms	54.4 ms	3.4 ms	6.3 ms	3.6 ms	758x vs CLI
Full-text search (allocator)	0.03 ms	54.1 ms	2.9 ms	5.1 ms	3.7 ms	1,554x vs CLI
Word index (self)	0.04 ms	54.7 ms	n/a	6.3 ms	4.2 ms	1,518x vs CLI
Structural outline	0.04 ms	54.9 ms	3.4 ms	—	2.5 ms	1,243x vs CLI

rtk-ai/rtk repo (329 files) — codedb vs rtk vs ripgrep vs grep:

Tool	Search "agent"	Speedup
codedb (pre-indexed)	0.065 ms	baseline
rtk	37 ms	569x slower
ripgrep	45 ms	692x slower
grep	80 ms	1,231x slower

Token Efficiency

codedb returns structured, relevant results — not raw line dumps. For AI agents, this means dramatically fewer tokens per query:

Repo	codedb MCP	ripgrep / grep	Reduction
codedb (search allocator)	~20 tokens	~32,564 tokens	1,628x fewer
merjs (search allocator)	~20 tokens	~4,007 tokens	200x fewer

Indexing Speed

codedb v0.2.57 uses worker-local parallel scan with deterministic merge — each worker builds its own partial index, then results are merged on the main thread:

Repo	Files	Cold start	Per file	vs v0.2.56
codedb	20	17 ms	0.85 ms	—
merjs	100	16 ms	0.16 ms	—
5,200 mixed files	5,200	310 ms	0.06 ms	—
openclaw/openclaw	6,315	346 ms	0.05 ms	10× faster

Indexes are built on startup and the watcher keeps them updated. The historical single-file indexing time above excludes event coalescing, polling delay, and queueing. Indexed queries reuse the index; live listing and fallback reads may access the filesystem. For repos >1000 files, file contents are released after indexing to save ~300-500MB.

Historical background measurements (openclaw, 6,315 files, Apple M4 Pro)

Metric	v0.2.56	v0.2.57	Delta
Steady-state RSS	1,867 MB	1,706 MB	−161 MB
git subprocesses / min (idle)	~30	~0	mtime-gated

The watcher stats .git/HEAD mtime before forking git rev-parse HEAD. These historical measurements do not bound watcher CPU under filesystem churn; see the issue #748 reproduction.

Why codedb is fast

• MCP server indexes once on startup → all queries hit in-memory data structures (O(1) hash lookups)
• CLI pays ~55ms process startup + full filesystem scan on every invocation
• ast-grep re-parses all files through tree-sitter on every call (~3ms)
• ripgrep/grep brute-force scan every file on every call (~5-7ms)
• The MCP advantage: index once, query thousands of times at sub-millisecond latency

Feature Matrix

Feature	codedb MCP	codedb CLI	ast-grep	ripgrep	grep	ctags
Structural parsing	✅	✅	✅	❌	❌	✅
Trigram search index	✅	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌
Inverted word index	✅	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌
Dependency graph	✅	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌
Version tracking	✅	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌
Pre-indexed (warm)	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌
No process startup	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌
MCP protocol	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌	❌
Full-text search	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅	❌
File watcher	✅	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌

A map for the next step: structural parsers, search indexes, and a dependency graph in one Zig binary.

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