codedb

What does this agent do, and when should you use it?

codedb is a code intelligence server for AI agents, built in Zig with native MCP support. It provides structural indexing, trigram search, word index, dependency graph, and file watching capabilities. Through 20+ MCP tools and an HTTP API, it offers fast, context-rich code queries, but does not have editing capabilities, leaving editing to the client's native tools. Its unique advantage is indexing performance: pre-indexed queries can be up to 538x faster than ripgrep, and index building is extremely fast (5200 files in ~310ms cold start). It supports multiple languages including Zig, C/C++, Python, TypeScript/JavaScript, Rust, Go, and more, with a local-first privacy approach.

codedb indexes project code and provides efficient queries to AI agents. On startup, it parses the codebase, building structural outlines, trigram full-text indexes, inverted word indexes, and dependency graphs, and continuously watches for file changes to incrementally update indexes. It exposes tools via the MCP protocol (stdio) or HTTP API (localhost:7719), such as codedb_tree (file tree), codedb_outline (symbols list), codedb_search (full-text search), codedb_word (O(1) word lookup), codedb_callers (callers), codedb_deps (dependency graph), and codedb_context (task composer). Agents can call these tools to explore code without scanning the filesystem, saving time and tokens.

1. A developer coding in Claude Code or Cursor wants to quickly locate a symbol definition or its callers; codedb provides responses in under a millisecond.
2. An AI agent performing refactoring on a large codebase needs to understand dependencies; codedb's deps tool provides a complete graph.
3. Searching for a specific string (like 'handleAuth') without full file scans; codedb's trigram search accelerates the query.
4. When needing to understand project structure, codedb's tree and outline tools generate structure with symbol counts.
5. For indexing multiple projects once and then querying frequently (e.g., in CI or local development), codedb's pre-indexed queries minimize latency.
6. For exploring public GitHub repos remotely, use the DeepWiki integration's remote MCP tools (read_wiki_structure, ask_question).

How do you install or deploy this agent?

macOS/Linux install:

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

This auto-registers MCP servers in Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, Cursor, Windsurf, and Devin. On Windows, run in PowerShell:

irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/justrach/codedb/v0.2.5838/install/install.ps1 | iex

Alternatively, use npm: npx -y codedeebee mcp or npm install -g codedeebee. Network access is required to download binaries.

How do you use this agent?

Start as an MCP server:

codedb mcp /path/to/your/project

Or as an HTTP server:

codedb serve /path/to/your/project

Then call tools via MCP client or HTTP, for example:

curl localhost:7719/tree
curl localhost:7719/symbol?name=AgentRegistry
curl localhost:7719/search?q=handleAuth&max=10

Use codedb --version to check version, disable telemetry with CODEDB_NO_TELEMETRY=1 or --no-telemetry.

What are this agent's strengths and limitations?

How does this agent compare with similar options?

Key facts side by side with the most closely related agents.

How does FollowAgents rate this agent?

Recent releases

Latest entries from the project's GitHub Releases. Notes are quoted from upstream as written, not rewritten or tested by FollowAgents.

1. v0.2.5860 CodeDB v0.2.5860 2026-09-27
   Release notes excerpt

   Faster hosted semantic index builds codedb semantic-index now sends 100-item batches with eight requests in flight by default. CODEDB_SEMANTIC_INDEX_CONCURRENCY still overrides the concurrency (1-8). Index builds wait out hosted rate limits with a doubling backoff capped at 30 seconds instead of failing after a few quick retries. Interactive codedb context calls are unchanged and still fall back to local results immediately. Local retrieval, the watcher, and the installer are unchanged.

   View on GitHub ↗
2. v0.2.5859 CodeDB v0.2.5859 2026-09-27
   Release notes excerpt

   Hosted semantic retrieval Fixes codedb context reporting semantic lane: unavailable with the default hosted configuration. The hosted default model id is now codedb-hosted-v1. Local ANN sidecars built by earlier releases are rebuilt once in the background; the bounded exact rerank serves requests meanwhile. Custom endpoints and explicit model overrides are unchanged. Local retrieval, the watcher, and the installer are unchanged.

   View on GitHub ↗
3. v0.2.5857 CodeDB v0.2.5857 2026-09-26
   Release notes excerpt

   More MCP clients The installer now registers codedb in every detected MCP client, not only Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, Cursor, Windsurf, and Devin. New when the client is already present: oh-my-pi, Hermes, Qwen Code, ZCode, Trae, Cline, Copilot CLI, Antigravity, Kiro, and OpenCode. Malformed JSON is left untouched. codedb nuke removes the same entries. Antigravity writes only ~/.gemini/antigravity/mcp_config.json, not Gemini CLI settings. Nuke still clears the stray Gemini path and the non-CN Trae User/mcp.json path. Retrieval, the watcher, and hosted embeddings are unchanged. …

   View on GitHub ↗

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