Cortex

One binary. Zero dependencies. 29 languages. 32 MCP tools. Local code intelligence for AI coding agents.

Documentation · npm · Issues

Works with

<p> <img src="assets/icons/claude.svg" width="32" height="32" alt="Claude Code" title="Claude Code" />&nbsp;&nbsp; <img src="assets/icons/cursor-dark.svg" width="32" height="32" alt="Cursor" title="Cursor" />&nbsp;&nbsp; <img src="assets/icons/copilot-dark.svg" width="32" height="32" alt="GitHub Copilot" title="GitHub Copilot" />&nbsp;&nbsp; <img src="assets/icons/windsurf-dark.svg" width="32" height="32" alt="Windsurf" title="Windsurf" />&nbsp;&nbsp; <img src="assets/icons/vscode.svg" width="32" height="32" alt="VS Code" title="VS Code" />&nbsp;&nbsp; <img src="assets/icons/codex-dark.svg" width="32" height="32" alt="OpenAI Codex" title="OpenAI Codex" />&nbsp;&nbsp; <img src="assets/icons/cline-dark.svg" width="32" height="32" alt="Cline" title="Cline" />&nbsp;&nbsp; <img src="assets/icons/kiro.svg" width="32" height="32" alt="Kiro" title="Kiro" />&nbsp;&nbsp; <img src="assets/icons/jetbrains.svg" width="32" height="32" alt="JetBrains" title="JetBrains" />&nbsp;&nbsp; <img src="assets/icons/neovim.svg" width="32" height="32" alt="Neovim" title="Neovim" /> </p>

Any MCP-compatible AI agent, IDE, or CLI tool connects out of the box. cortex install auto-detects your setup and writes the config.

<details> <summary>All 25 supported platforms</summary>

| Platform | Install command | |---|---| | Claude Code (Linux/Mac) | cortex install | | Claude Code (Windows) | cortex install --platform claude-code | | Codex | cortex install --platform codex | | OpenCode | cortex install --platform opencode | | GitHub Copilot CLI | cortex install --platform copilot | | VS Code Copilot Chat | cortex vscode install | | Aider | cortex install --platform aider | | OpenClaw | cortex install --platform openclaw | | Factory Droid | cortex install --platform droid | | Trae | cortex install --platform trae | | Trae CN | cortex install --platform trae-cn | | Gemini CLI | cortex install --platform gemini | | Hermes | cortex install --platform hermes | | Kimi Code | cortex install --platform kimi | | Kiro IDE/CLI | cortex kiro install | | Pi coding agent | cortex install --platform pi | | Cursor | cortex cursor install | | Google Antigravity | cortex antigravity install | | Windsurf | cortex install --platform windsurf | | Zed | cortex install --platform zed | | JetBrains | cortex install --platform jetbrains | | Cline/Roo | cortex install --platform cline | | Continue.dev | cortex install --platform continue | | Supermaven | cortex install --platform supermaven | | Tabnine | cortex install --platform tabnine |

</details>

Why Cortex

An agent asking "what calls processOrder" gets a 200-token graph result instead of burning 20,000 tokens reading files. That's 100x fewer tokens on a single structural question.

Cortex indexes your repository into a SQLite call graph and exposes it over the Model Context Protocol. 127 files indexed in 535ms. Incremental re-index in 13ms. Handles 100K to 1M+ line repositories.

v1.1 adds multi-source confidence-aware intelligence. Cortex now ingests SCIP indexes for precise symbol resolution, runs framework-specific adapters (FastAPI, Express, NestJS, Spring, Django, React) to detect dependency injection and routing wiring, tags every edge with a confidence tier, and falls back honestly when it can't give a confident answer. The ask and get_task_context tools are completely overhauled with evidence-fusion ranking and structured fallback suggestions.

Install

npx @1337xcode/cortex@latest install

<details> <summary>Other methods</summary>

Shell script

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/1337Xcode/cortex/main/install.sh | sh

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/1337Xcode/cortex.git && cd cortex
cargo build --release
cp target/release/cortex ~/.local/bin/

</details>

Quick start

cortex index    # parse your repo, build the graph
cortex install  # detect Claude Code / Cursor, write MCP config
cortex serve    # start the MCP server

Your agent queries the graph instead of reading raw files.

Demo commands

cortex impact UserService.getUser       # blast radius: what breaks if I change this?
cortex explain DatabasePool.acquire     # offline function explanation, zero LLM calls
cortex security report                  # taint flows, OWASP patterns, dependency vulns
cortex diff main feature-branch         # call graph diff between branches
cortex viz --export graph.html          # interactive 3D graph in a standalone HTML file
cortex ci --fail-on-taint               # CI quality gate with exit codes
cortex hotspots --months 6              # high-churn risky code ranked by risk score
cortex coverage --lcov coverage.lcov    # populate coverage field, rank untested functions
cortex modules                          # Leiden community detection module boundaries
cortex federate add ../auth-service     # query across repos with unified graph
cortex benchmark                        # run correctness suite, report pass rate + token savings
cortex status --savings                 # token savings dashboard with honest net-negative reporting
cortex index --repair                   # rebuild index from scratch, preserve observations
cortex semantic enable                  # build embedding index for semantic search

What you get

• 29 languages parsed via tree-sitter
• 32 MCP tools exposed over stdio, or 5 in smart mode (the ask meta-tool routes internally)
• SCIP index ingestion for precise symbol resolution — SCIP edges win over tree-sitter on conflicts
• 6 framework adapters (FastAPI, Express, NestJS, Spring, Django, React) detect DI wiring, middleware chains, and routing that tree-sitter cannot see
• Confidence-tagged edges — every edge carries edge_source and confidence (1.0 SCIP / 0.8 framework / 0.5 AST / 0.3 name-match); queries default to confidence ≥ 0.7
• Evidence-fusion get_task_context — multi-signal ranking (BM25 + SCIP distance + git recency + edge confidence + file size penalty) with per-file reasons and guaranteed non-empty results
• Honest fallback — ask returns structured grep suggestions when confidence is below MEDIUM; never returns confidently wrong data from an unhealthy index
• Index health gate — all tools return a structured error with fallback suggestions when the index is empty or corrupt
• Token savings dashboard — cortex status --savings shows cumulative net saved, average per query, and net-negative queries (reported honestly)
• get_repo_brief — zero-parameter cold-start summary under 400 tokens: languages, frameworks, entry points, hotspots, security patterns, test shape
• Tool surface management — 10 default tools, 7 experimental (opt-in), 5 smart-tools mode; semantic_search only listed when embeddings are built
• Incremental embeddings — only re-embeds functions whose content hash changed; cortex semantic enable builds the initial index
• Correctness benchmarks — cortex benchmark validates tool accuracy against ground-truth; CI gate fails the build if pass rate drops below 70%
• Sub-second incremental re-indexing via native OS file watcher (inotify, FSEvents, ReadDirectoryChangesW)
• Configurable model pricing via ~/.cortex/pricing.toml with longest-prefix matching
• Taint flow analysis, OWASP Top 10 detection, SBOM generation all running locally, no cloud
• Cross-session memory that marks observations stale when linked code changes
• Multi-repo federation for querying across repositories with a unified graph
• CI quality gates with configurable thresholds and exit codes
• 3D interactive graph visualization exportable to standalone HTML
• Portable JSON bundle (cortex.json) for team sharing via git
• Works offline. No cloud, no API keys, no Docker, no language runtimes.

<details> <summary>All 29 supported languages</summary>

| Language | Language | Language | |----------|----------|----------| | Python | TypeScript | JavaScript | | Rust | Go | Java | | C | C++ | C# | | Ruby | PHP | Swift | | Kotlin | Scala | Lua | | Zig | Haskell | Elixir | | Dart | R | Julia | | OCaml | Bash | HCL/Terraform | | Perl | Objective-C | SQL | | YAML | TOML | |

</details>

Architecture

graph TD
    A[Repository Files] --> B[File Watcher<br/>notify crate]
    B --> C[Indexer Pipeline<br/>Rayon + tree-sitter]
    C --> D[SQLite Graph Store<br/>WAL + FTS5 + sqlite-vec]
    D --> E[MCP Server<br/>Tokio + JSON-RPC 2.0]
    E --> F[AI Coding Agent]

    C --> G1[SCIP Ingester<br/>Protobuf → HIGH edges]
    G1 --> D

    C --> G2[Framework Adapters<br/>FastAPI · Express · NestJS<br/>Spring · Django · React]
    G2 --> D

    C --> G3[Security Pass<br/>Taint + OWASP + SBOM]
    G3 --> D

    D --> H[Bundle Exporter<br/>cortex.json]
    H --> I[Git Repository<br/>Team Sharing]

    D --> J[Memory Layer<br/>Staleness-aware observations]

    D --> K[Evidence Fusion<br/>BM25 + SCIP + git + embeddings]
    K --> E

Confidence tiers

Every edge in the graph carries a source and confidence value. Queries default to confidence ≥ 0.7 (MEDIUM), filtering out heuristic name-match edges.

| Source | Confidence | How produced | |--------|-----------|--------------| | scip | 1.0 HIGH | SCIP index (precise symbol resolution) | | framework_adapter | 0.8 MEDIUM | FastAPI/Express/NestJS/Spring/Django/React pattern matching | | ast_direct | 0.5 LOW | tree-sitter AST extraction | | name_match | 0.3 VERY_LOW | heuristic name-based resolution |

Benchmark results

Cortex ships with a self-referential benchmark suite (benchmark/cortex_self_benchmark.json, 24 cases) covering trace_callers, blast_radius, get_task_context, and ask. Run it against your index:

cortex benchmark

The CI pipeline runs this on every release and fails the build if pass rate drops below 70%.

Comparison

| Feature | Cortex | codebase-memory-mcp | Srclight | Serena | mcp-codebase-index | |---------|--------|---------------------|----------|--------|-------------------| | Architecture | Rust binary, SQLite | C binary, SQLite | Python, SQLite | Python, LSP | Python, SQLite | | Languages | 29 (tree-sitter) | 66 (tree-sitter) | 10 (tree-sitter) | 40+ (LSP) | 4 | | MCP tools | 32 (or 5 smart mode) | 14 | 42 | ~20 | 17 | | Smart tool routing | Yes (ask meta-tool) | No | No | No | No | | SCIP precise resolution | Yes | No | No | Yes (LSP) | No | | Framework adapters | 6 (DI, routing, middleware) | No