Octocode MCP Server
io.github.Muvon/octocode
AI-powered code indexer with semantic search, knowledge graphs, and LSP integration for your codebase
What is the Octocode MCP server?
Octocode is an MCP server that transforms your codebase into a navigable knowledge graph using tree-sitter AST parsing. It gives AI assistants like Claude and Cursor semantic search, dependency navigation, and structural understanding of your code without requiring external embeddings or indexing.
Octocode enables AI agents to understand your codebase structure through semantic search, live symbol graphs, and LSP-powered code navigation. Instead of treating code as flat text, it builds a dependency graph of files, imports, function calls, and implementations—letting your AI assistant answer architectural questions, find cross-file dependencies, and navigate your project like a developer would.
How to install Octocode
Copy-paste configuration for popular MCP clients.
Tools & capabilities
Tools this server exposes to the agent.
semantic_search— Find code by meaning using natural language queries—e.g., 'authentication middleware', 'error handling', 'database queries'view_signatures— View file structure including function signatures, class definitions, and imports without reading entire filesgraphrag— Query the live file and symbol graph to search nodes, inspect relationships (imports, calls, extends, implements), and find dependency pathsstructural_search— AST pattern matching to find specific code patterns like .unwrap() calls, new instantiations, or custom patternslsp_goto_definition— Jump to a symbol's definition (requires --with-lsp flag and language server)lsp_find_references— Find all usages of a symbol across the workspace (requires --with-lsp)lsp_hover— Get type information and documentation for a symbol (requires --with-lsp)lsp_document_symbols— List symbols in a file (requires --with-lsp)lsp_workspace_symbols— Search for symbols across the entire workspace (requires --with-lsp)lsp_completion— Get code completions (requires --with-lsp)
Use cases
- Onboard new developers by asking your AI assistant to explain how authentication, payment processing, or other key systems work
- Find all files and call sites that depend on a specific module or function to understand impact before refactoring
- Identify error handling patterns and potential panics across your codebase to improve reliability
- Review PRs by having your AI assistant analyze changes in context of the full dependency graph
- Search for code by meaning rather than keywords—e.g., 'database connection pooling' instead of searching for 'pool' or 'connection'
Octocode MCP server FAQ
Octocode is an MCP server that indexes your codebase using tree-sitter AST parsing to build a live knowledge graph of files, symbols, imports, and dependencies. It exposes semantic search, code navigation, and structural queries to AI assistants like Claude and Cursor.
Yes, Octocode is open source under Apache 2.0. However, semantic search requires an embedding API key (Voyage AI offers 200M free tokens/month; OpenAI, Jina, and Google embeddings are also supported).
Install the Octocode binary (via curl, Homebrew, or cargo), then add it to your MCP config: {"mcpServers": {"octocode": {"command": "octocode", "args": ["mcp", "--path", "/your/project"]}}}. See the MCP Client Setup Guide for detailed instructions for Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf, and 15+ other clients.
Semantic search requires an embedding API key (Voyage, OpenAI, Jina, or Google). The live graph and structural search work without any external services. Optional LLM integration (OpenRouter) adds code descriptions and commit message analysis.
16 languages including Rust, Python, TypeScript/JavaScript, Go, PHP, C++, Ruby, Java, Swift, Svelte, Lua, CSS, JSON, Bash, and Markdown with full tree-sitter AST parsing.
The live graph and structural search work fully offline. Semantic search requires an embedding API call, but all processing happens locally—your code never leaves your machine.
README (reference)
Source of truth, from the repository.
Structural Code Intelligence for AI Agents — MCP Server + Knowledge Graph + Semantic Search
Give your AI assistant a brain for your codebase. Octocode transforms your project into a navigable knowledge graph that Claude, Cursor, and other AI agents can search, understand, and navigate.
🚀 Quick Start • 🤖 MCP Integration • 📖 Documentation • 🌐 Website
<a href="https://glama.ai/mcp/servers/Muvon/octocode"> <img width="300" src="https://glama.ai/mcp/servers/Muvon/octocode/badge" alt="Octocode MCP server" /> </a> </div>🤖 Built for AI Agents
The Problem: AI assistants are blind to your codebase. They can't search your files, understand dependencies, or remember context across sessions.
The Solution: Octocode's MCP server gives AI agents:
- 🔍 Semantic search — Find code by meaning, not keywords
- 🕸️ Knowledge graph — Navigate imports, calls, and dependencies
- 📝 Code signatures — View structure without reading entire files
- 🧭 LSP precision — Go-to-definition, find-references, and hover docs via your language server
Works with: Claude Desktop • Cursor • Windsurf • Any MCP-compatible AI
// Add to your AI assistant config
{
"mcpServers": {
"octocode": {
"command": "octocode",
"args": ["mcp", "--path", "/your/project"]
}
}
}
Now your AI assistant can:
You: "Where is authentication handled?"
AI: *searches your codebase* "Authentication is in src/middleware/auth.rs,
which imports jwt.rs for token validation and calls user_store.rs for lookup."
You: "What files depend on the payment module?"
AI: *queries knowledge graph* "src/api/handlers/payment.rs imports payment/mod.rs,
which is also used by src/workers/refund.rs and src/cron/billing.rs"
You: "Find every call site of this function"
AI: *uses LSP find-references* "process_payment() is called from 4 places:
checkout.rs:87, refund.rs:134, billing.rs:56, and tests/payment_test.rs:23"
🤔 Why Octocode?
Standard RAG treats your code as flat text chunks. It finds similar-sounding snippets but has no idea that auth_middleware.rs imports jwt.rs, calls user_store.rs, and is wired into router.rs. Octocode understands structure.
# Semantic search finds the right code
octocode search "authentication middleware"
→ src/middleware/auth.rs | Similarity 0.923
# The GraphRAG CLI queries the optional persisted graph
octocode config --graphrag-enabled true
octocode index
octocode graphrag get-relationships --node-id src/middleware/auth.rs
Outgoing:
imports → jwt (src/auth/jwt.rs): token validation logic
calls → user_store (src/db/user_store.rs): user lookup by token
Incoming:
imports ← router (src/router.rs): wires auth into the request pipeline
Octocode uses tree-sitter AST parsing to build a live graph of files, symbols, imports, calls, inheritance, and implementations. The MCP graphrag tool builds this graph lazily from the current source tree, without an index, embeddings, or an LLM. Optional indexed GraphRAG adds semantic file discovery, descriptions, and broader architectural relationships.
🔬 How It Works
Current Source → Tree-sitter AST → Live Symbol Graph ──────────────→ MCP `graphrag`
↑ ↑
Indexed Code → Embeddings + Optional LLM → Persisted File Enrichment ─────┘
- Live AST Graph — tree-sitter extracts file and symbol nodes plus deterministic
contains,imports,calls,extends, andimplementsrelationships directly from current source - Always-on Graph Navigation — MCP graph lookup, relationship traversal, path finding, and overview work with
[graphrag].enabled = false - Optional Enrichment — enabling indexed GraphRAG overlays semantic file matches, LLM descriptions, and broader file-level architectural relationships; symbols are never embedded or LLM-generated
- Hybrid Search — semantic similarity + BM25 full-text search + reranking handles meaning-based code retrieval separately
- MCP Server — exposes
semantic_search,view_signatures,graphrag, andstructural_searchto any MCP-compatible client
✨ What Makes It Different
| Standard RAG | Doc Lookup Tools | Octocode | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Indexes | Text chunks | External library docs | Your codebase structure (AST) |
| Understands | Similar text | API specs & usage | Functions, imports, dependencies |
| Cross-file | No | No | Yes — navigates the dependency graph |
| Relationships | No | No | imports, calls, implements, extends... |
| AI integration | Varies | MCP | Native MCP server + LSP |
Doc tools give AI the manual for libraries you use. Octocode gives AI the blueprint of how you put them together.
Built with Rust for performance. Local-first for privacy. Open source (Apache 2.0) for transparency.
📊 Retrieval Quality
Octocode ships a reproducible retrieval benchmark (benchmark/): 127 curated code-search queries with line-range ground truth, run against octocode's own source (pinned at b1771ba so annotations never drift). The numbers below use a fully local, no-API-key stack — jina-embeddings-v2-base-code via fastembed, no reranker — so they are a floor, not a ceiling:
| Config | Hit@5 | Hit@10 | MRR | NDCG@10 | Recall@10 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dense vector only | 0.598 | 0.717 | 0.485 | 0.528 | 0.671 |
| Hybrid, default RRF weights (0.7/0.3) | 0.598 | 0.717 | 0.485 | 0.528 | 0.671 |
| Hybrid, keyword-tuned (0.3/0.7) | 0.732 | 0.835 | 0.572 | 0.620 | 0.807 |
Tilting RRF fusion toward the BM25/keyword signal — which carries disproportionate weight for code's exact identifiers — lifts Hit@5 by +22% and Recall@10 by +20% at zero added cost.
The benchmark also flags what doesn't help here (full 6-variant matrix in benchmark/RESULTS.md): a generic local cross-encoder reranker (bge-reranker-base) actually regressed results (Hit@5 0.732 → 0.598) — code retrieval needs a code-aware reranker (e.g. voyage:rerank-2.5), not an off-the-shelf one.
git worktree add /tmp/corpus b1771ba # pin the corpus to the ground-truth commit
CORPUS=/tmp/corpus python3 benchmark/run_matrix.py
See benchmark/README.md for methodology and metric definitions.
🚀 Quick Start
1. Install
# Universal installer (Linux, macOS, Windows)
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Muvon/octocode/master/install.sh | sh
# macOS with Homebrew
brew install muvon/tap/octocode
<details>
<summary><strong>Other installation methods</strong></summary>
# Cargo (build from source)
cargo install --git https://github.com/Muvon/octocode
# Download binary from releases
# https://github.com/Muvon/octocode/releases
See Installation Guide for platform-specific instructions.
</details>2. Set Up API Keys
# Required: Embedding provider (Voyage AI has 200M free tokens/month)
export VOYAGE_API_KEY="your-voyage-api-key"
# Optional: LLM for commit messages, code review
export OPENROUTER_API_KEY="your-openrouter-api-key"
Get your Voyage API key: voyageai.com (free tier available)
<details> <summary><strong>Other embedding providers</strong></summary>Octocode supports multiple embedding providers:
# OpenAI
export OPENAI_API_KEY="your-key"
octocode config --code-embedding-model "openai:text-embedding-3-small"
# Jina AI
export JINA_API_KEY="your-key"
octocode config --code-embedding-model "jina:jina-embeddings-v3"
# Google
export GOOGLE_API_KEY="your-key"
octocode config --code-embedding-model "google:text-embedding-005"
See API Keys guide for all supported providers.
</details>3. Index Your Codebase
cd /your/project
octocode index
# → Indexed 12,847 blocks across 342 files
4. Search Your Code
# Natural language search
octocode search "authentication middleware"
# Multi-query for broader results
octocode search "auth" "middleware" "session"
# Filter by language
octocode search "database connection pool" --lang rust
# Search commit history
octocode search "authentication refactor" --mode commits
5. Connect Your AI Assistant
Add to your MCP client config (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Windsurf):
{
"mcpServers": {
"octocode": {
"command": "octocode",
"args": ["mcp", "--path", "/your/project"]
}
}
}
Done! Your AI assistant now understands your codebase structure.
🔌 MCP Server Integration
Octocode includes a built-in MCP server that exposes your codebase as tools to AI assistants. This is the primary way to use Octocode — give your AI assistant direct access to search and navigate your code.
Available Tools
| Tool | What It Does |
|---|---|
semantic_search | Find code by meaning — "authentication flow", "error handling", "database queries" |
view_signatures | View file structure — function signatures, class definitions, imports |
graphrag | Always-on file/symbol graph — search nodes, inspect relationships, and find paths without indexing |
structural_search | AST pattern matching — find .unwrap() calls, new instantiations, specific patterns |
lsp_goto_definition | Jump to a symbol's definition (requires --with-lsp) |
lsp_find_references | Find all usages of a symbol across the workspace (requires --with-lsp) |
lsp_hover | Type info and documentation for a symbol (requires --with-lsp) |
lsp_document_symbols / lsp_workspace_symbols / lsp_completion | File symbols, workspace-wide symbol search, completions (requires --with-lsp) |
Enable the LSP tools by starting the server with your language server:
octocode mcp --path /your/project --with-lsp="rust-analyzer"
Conversational AI Examples
Once connected, your AI assistant can answer questions about your codebase:
You: "Where is user authentication implemented?"
AI: *uses semantic_search* "Found in src/auth/login.rs. The authenticate() function
validates credentials against the database, generates a JWT token, and stores
the session in Redis."
You: "What files depend on the payment module?"
AI: *uses graphrag* "src/api/handlers/payment.rs imports payment/mod.rs, which is also
used by src/workers/refund.rs and src/cron/billing.rs. The payment module exports
process_payment() and validate_transaction() functions."
You: "Show me all error handling in the API layer"
AI: *uses structural_search* "Found 23 error handling patterns in src/api/:
- 15 use Result<T, ApiError> with explicit error types
- 8 use .unwrap() (potential panics in handlers/user.rs:42, handlers/auth.rs:87)
- 3 use .expect() with custom messages"
Quick Setup
Octomind (Recommended) — Zero setup, Octocode pre-configured:
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/muvon/octomind/master/install.sh | bash
octomind run developer:rust
Claude Code (CLI) — Command-line setup:
claude mcp add octocode -- octocode mcp --path /path/to/your/project
Claude Desktop / Cursor / Windsurf — Add to config:
{
"mcpServers": {
"octocode": {
"command": "octocode",
"args": ["mcp", "--path", "/path/to/your/project"]
}
}
}
Config locations:
- Claude Desktop:
~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json(macOS) - Cursor:
~/.cursor/mcp.jsonor Settings → MCP Servers - Windsurf: Settings → MCP
📖 Complete MCP Client Setup Guide — Detailed instructions for 15+ clients including VS Code (Cline/Continue), Zed, Replit, and more.
🎯 What Can You Do With It?
New developer onboarding:
You: "How does the authentication system work?"
AI: *searches and navigates* "Authentication starts in src/middleware/auth.rs which
validates JWT tokens. It calls src/auth/jwt.rs for token verification, which uses
the public key from config. Failed auth returns 401 via src/errors/auth_error.rs.
Sessions are stored in Redis via src/cache/session.rs."
Code archaeology:
You: "Find all places we handle database errors"
AI: *structural search* "Found 47 error handling patterns:
- 32 use Result<T, DbError> with proper error types
- 15 use .unwrap() (potential issues in src/db/user.rs:23, src/db/order.rs:156)
- Recommend adding proper error handling to those locations"
Refactoring with confidence:
You: "What depends on the PaymentProcessor trait?"
AI: *queries graph* "src/api/handlers/checkout.rs, src/workers/refund_worker.rs,
and src/cron/billing.rs all depend on PaymentProcessor. The trait is defined
in src/domain/payment.rs and implemented by src/infrastructure/stripe.rs
and src/infrastructure/paypal.rs."
Code review assistance:
You: "Review this PR for security issues"
AI: *analyzes changes* "The PR adds password hashing in src/auth/hash.rs. However,
it uses SHA256 which is fast and vulnerable to brute force. Recommend using
bcrypt or argon2 instead. Also found 3 instances of .unwrap() that could panic
in production."
🌐 Supported Languages
16 languages with full tree-sitter AST parsing:
| Language | Extensions | Features |
|---|---|---|
| Rust | .rs | Full AST parsing, pub/use detection, module structure |
| Python | .py | Import/class/function extraction, docstring parsing |
| TypeScript/JavaScript | .ts, .tsx, .js, .jsx | ES6 imports/exports, type definitions |
| Go | .go | Package/import analysis, struct/interface parsing |
| PHP | .php | Class/function extraction, namespace support |
| C++ | .cpp, .cc, .cxx, .c++, .c, .h, .hpp, .hxx, .cppm, .ixx, .mxx, .ccm, .cxxm | Include analysis, class/function extraction, C++20 module support |
| Ruby | .rb | Class/module extraction, method definitions |
| Java | .java | Import analysis, class/method extraction |
| Swift | .swift | Class/struct/protocol extraction, import analysis |
| Svelte | .svelte | Component structure, script/style block extraction |
| Lua | .lua | Function and table extraction |
| CSS | .css | Rule and selector extraction |
| JSON | .json | Structure analysis, key extraction |
| Bash | .sh, .bash | Function and variable extraction |
| Markdown | .md | Document section indexing, header extraction |
📚 Documentation
- Getting Started — First steps and basic workflow
- Installation Guide — Detailed methods and building from source
- MCP Client Setup — Connect to Claude, Cursor, Windsurf, and 15+ clients
- MCP Integration — MCP server details and advanced configuration
- Commands Reference — Complete CLI reference
- Configuration — Templates and customization
- API Keys — Provider setup guide
- Architecture — How it works under the hood
- Contributing — Development setup
🔒 Privacy & Security
- 🏠 Local-first — local embedding models available on supported platforms (macOS ARM default builds); cloud providers on all platforms
- 🔐 Secure — API keys stored locally, env vars supported
- 🚫 Respects .gitignore — Never indexes sensitive files
- 🛡️ MCP security — Local-only server, no external network for search
- 📤 Cloud-safe — Embeddings process only metadata, never source code
We measure semantic search quality using a hand-annotated ground truth dataset of 254 queries (127 code + 127 docs) with precise line-range annotations. Each query has 1–3 expected results scored by relevance.
Tested on commit b1771ba with benchmark config (contextual retrieval, Voyage reranker, RaBitQ quantization).
| Metric | Score |
|---|---|
| Hit@5 | 0.929 (118/127) |
| Hit@10 | 0.953 (121/127) |
| MRR | 0.776 |
| NDCG@10 | 0.801 |
| Recall@5 | 0.902 |
| Recall@10 | 0.921 |
Missed queries (6 of 127):
| # | Query | Expected | Got (top 1) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 43 | how to set up MCP proxy for managing multiple repositories | doc/MCP_INTEGRATION.md:286-311 | doc/MCP_INTEGRATION.md:286-4 |
| 51 | what are the prerequisites before using octocode | doc/GETTING_STARTED.md:6-12 | doc/CONTRIBUTING.md:7-33 |
| 59 | what to do when hitting API rate limits | doc/GETTING_STARTED.md:209-216 | doc/PERFORMANCE.md:304-356 |
| 75 | typical performance metrics for small medium and large projects | doc/PERFORMANCE.md:4-13 | doc/PERFORMANCE.md:414-14 |
| 112 | how to install octocode on different operating systems | INSTALL.md:4-14 | INSTALL.md:49-70 |
| 115 | how to fix macOS Gatekeeper blocking the binary | INSTALL.md:199-206 | INSTALL.md:198-119 |
| Metric | Score |
|---|---|
| Hit@5 | 0.992 (126/127) |
| Hit@10 | 0.992 (126/127) |
| MRR | 0.895 |
| NDCG@10 | 0.906 |
| Recall@5 | 0.962 |
| Recall@10 | 0.974 |
Missed queries (1 of 127):
| # | Query | Expected | Got (top 1) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 105 | how does the system ensure two developers get the same database path | src/storage.rs:60-83 | src/mcp/proxy.rs:631-644 |
Metrics: Hit@k (did the answer appear?), MRR (how high?), NDCG@10 (are best results ranked first?), Recall@k (how many found?). See benchmark/ for methodology, scoring script, and the full dataset.
</details>🤝 Community & Support
- ⭐ Star us on GitHub — It really helps!
- 🐛 Report Issues
- 💬 Discussions
- 📧 opensource@muvon.io
- 🌐 muvon.io
⚖️ License
Apache License 2.0 — See LICENSE for details.
<div align="center">
Built with 🦀 Rust by Muvon in Hong Kong
</div>mcp-name: io.github.Muvon/octocode
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