Codeintel

jarvis

Your coding agent should not spend its context window on grep.

When your agent asks *"where is AuthService used?"*, grep returns comments, markdown, test fixtures, and similarly named symbols in one noisy pile. The agent burns context re-reading files to filter signal from noise — and still misses call sites.

jarvis precomputes a local code-intelligence layer so your agent calls findReferences for exact occurrences, goToDefinition for the defining range, callHierarchy for call paths, and searchCode for precise lexical search — ten MCP tools for Claude Code, Cursor, or any MCP client. Your code and indexes never leave your machine.

Quick start · MCP tools · Dashboard · Limits · Details · Docs

Quick start

1. Install the standalone binary:

brew install jarvis-intelligence/jarvis/jarvis

Linux users need Homebrew/Linuxbrew installed first. The formula supports macOS arm64/x86_64 and Linux arm64/x86_64, installs both jarvis and jarvis-server, and embeds Python 3.12, dashboard assets, tree-sitter libraries, watch, scip, zoekt-git-index, and zoekt-webserver. Homebrew supplies universal-ctags. No Python, uv, pip, or PyPI installation is required.

Upgrade with brew upgrade jarvis; recover a damaged installation with brew reinstall jarvis.

2. Index a repo (slug defaults to the directory name):

jarvis index /path/to/your/repo

3. Register the MCP server:

claude mcp add jarvis --scope user -- jarvis-server

Ask your agent *"find all references to AuthService"* — it calls findReferences instead of grepping.

Other MCP clients (Cursor, Claude Desktop, any stdio client)

{

"mcpServers": { "jarvis": { "command": "jarvis-server" } } }

If your client can't find jarvis-server on PATH (GUI apps often don't inherit your shell's), use the absolute path from which jarvis-server.

Claude Code plugin (registers MCP + ships agent skills)

Install the Homebrew binary first. The plugin adds jarvis skills and can register the already-installed jarvis-server.

/plugin marketplace add jarvis-intelligence/jarvis-index

/plugin install jarvis@jarvis

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Optional language indexers

The standalone package includes the SCIP converter and both Zoekt binaries. The Homebrew formula does not install setup.sh; from a jarvis source checkout, install the optional per-language indexer for your repo:

For Maven-built Java repositories on macOS, also install a modern Bash with brew install bash, then run sh setup.sh --only bash-shim from that same source checkout. Reindex after adding an indexer. Without the matching indexer, documentSymbols and goToDefinition still work via Tree-sitter where coverage exists; findReferences, callHierarchy, and typeHierarchy return recovery guidance.

Not included

semanticSearch is registered for MCP compatibility but is excluded from the standalone distribution. It returns a Homebrew-specific unavailability error that points to the source-build steps below; lexical search and symbol search remain available.

Source-build semantic search

The standalone Homebrew package excludes semantic dependencies. In a source checkout, install them with:

uv run jarvis install-semantic

Then index explicitly:

uv run jarvis index /path/to/repo --semantic

install-semantic also pre-downloads the embedding model (BAAI/bge-m3, ~4.3 GB, one time) into the shared Hugging Face cache (~/.cache/huggingface/); every indexed repo reuses it. If the download is interrupted, the next jarvis index retries it automatically.

MCP tools

Dashboard

jarvis dashboard          # serves http://127.0.0.1:6080 and opens a browser

A localhost web console over the same ~/.jarvis data the CLI and MCP server read:

Requirements and limits

• macOS arm64/x86_64 and Linux arm64/x86_64 only. Windows is not supported.
• Semantic search is unavailable in the Homebrew distribution.
• One language per repo — detected by extension plurality across git-tracked files; override with --language.
• jarvis never edits code. It is the retrieval half — Serena complements it for renames/refactors.
• Indexing is explicit — run jarvis index (or jarvis watch) before querying.

Details

How it works

One indexing CLI writes precomputed indexes into ~/.jarvis; one stdio runtime reads them down. The two share no other contract.

• Publishing is atomic — a reindex writes a new snapshot, then flips the current pointer via os.replace. A query reading the old snapshot keeps working; no downtime window.
• The runtime path never writes — every query opens the published snapshot read-only (mode=ro&immutable=1).
• The package graph is rebuilt, not accumulated — each reindex clears that repo's outgoing edges before recomputing.

Full detail: docs/system-architecture.md

Indexing CLI reference

jarvis index /path/to/your/repo            # slug defaults to the directory name

jarvis index /path/to/your/repo --slug foo # or pick one explicitly jarvis index /path/to/your/repo --scheme MyScheme # Swift repo with an ambiguous Xcode scheme jarvis index /path/to/your/repo --language python # force the language instead of detecting it jarvis index /path/to/your/repo --no-scip # skip optional SCIP enrichment; syntax baseline + Zoekt still publish jarvis index /path/to/your/repo --scip # re-enable SCIP enrichment (both flags persist per repo) jarvis list jarvis status foo jarvis reindex foo jarvis forget foo jarvis watch /path/to/your/repo [--debounce 5.0] # debounced auto-reindex on file changes (foreground)

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Known upstream limitations

• `scip-java` can't index Android/Gradle repos — its Gradle plugin keys off standard source sets that AGP replaces (scip-java#177). Detected automatically; degrades to search-only.
• Kotlin indexing requires an exact Kotlin version match — scip-kotlinc is compiled against one pinned release (currently 2.2.0). Detected automatically.
• Maven-built Java repos need bash ≥ 4.4 on macOS — brew install bash fixes it.
• Swift indexing requires `scip >= v0.9.0` — older converters silently drop occurrence ranges. jarvis index refuses an older scip rather than publishing a broken index.

Configuration

The source-development semantic path has additional model-prefix overrides; they have no effect in the standalone distribution.

Documentation

• docs/project-overview-pdr.md — scope, value prop, out-of-scope items
• docs/system-architecture.md — architectural guarantees, storage layout, query paths
• docs/codebase-summary.md — module map, test coverage
• docs/code-standards.md — code patterns and conventions
• docs/dashboard.md — dashboard views, actions, security model

License

MIT