CICADA — Claude Code MCP server: what it does, how to install
Parses codebases into AST indexes across 17+ languages to deliver compact symbol signatures. Cuts down token waste during assistant searches.
claude mcp add cicada -- uvx cicada-mcpWhat CICADA does
CICADA builds a local syntax tree index, capturing code definitions and call sites. Instead of reading entire files with text search, the assistant inspects compact signatures and references. It runs completely offline. All index files and symbol hashes live inside ~/.cicada/ without telemetry tracking.
The server handles more than 17 programming languages. For semantic discovery, it relies on keyword extraction or local embeddings through Ollama. Running the tool requires Python 3.10+ alongside the Astral uv package manager. Pull request attribution depends on the external gh CLI utility.
The author has discontinued development. Benchmark results showed that modern frontier models derive minimal benefit from separate code intelligence layers.
What it helps with
- retrieve function signatures without dumping whole files into context
- locate cross-language call sites and module references
- trace code origins back to GitHub pull requests via
gh - query codebase symbols using Ollama embeddings
Example prompts for the agent
- Where is the authenticate function called across the codebase?
- Show me all method signatures inside the AuthService class.
- Find the pull request that introduced this error handling logic.
How to install CICADA
Platform CLI
claude mcp add cicada -- uvx cicada-mcpuvx runs the command named after the package; if the README names another one, use uvx --from cicada-mcp <command>
Platform CLI
codex mcp add cicada -- uvx cicada-mcpuvx runs the command named after the package; if the README names another one, use uvx --from cicada-mcp <command>
Config file
{
"mcpServers": {
"cicada": {
"command": "uvx",
"args": [
"cicada-mcp"
]
}
}
}uvx runs the command named after the package; if the README names another one, use uvx --from cicada-mcp <command>
Config file
{
"servers": {
"cicada": {
"type": "stdio",
"command": "uvx",
"args": [
"cicada-mcp"
]
}
}
}uvx runs the command named after the package; if the README names another one, use uvx --from cicada-mcp <command>
Platform CLI
gemini mcp add cicada uvx cicada-mcpuvx runs the command named after the package; if the README names another one, use uvx --from cicada-mcp <command>
Step by step, with commands for each platform: How to add an MCP server to Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, VS Code, Gemini CLI and more
Questions about CICADA
How to install CICADA in Claude Code?
Run claude mcp add cicada -- uvx cicada-mcp in your terminal.
What languages does CICADA parse?
The tool supports over 17 languages, including Python, Elixir, TypeScript, Rust, Go, and Java.
Why was CICADA discontinued?
The maintainer archived the project after finding that frontier reasoning models gain virtually no advantage from standalone code intelligence tools.
