Sense — Claude Code MCP server: code graph and semantic search
A local MCP server that indexes your repo once and hands the agent a symbol graph plus semantic search, so it stops opening dozens of files to trace a call.
Open on GitHubWhat Sense does
Sense exposes four tools over MCP: sense_graph for symbol relationships, callers, callees, inheritance, tests and dead code; sense_search for hybrid semantic lookup with keyword and text fallback; sense_blast for blast radius, affected code and tests with a risk score; and sense_conventions for project conventions read off the source. Everything stays on your machine — one binary, one local index, no account and no API key.
Indexing is a manual step: cd /path/to/project && sense scan. Parsing runs through tree-sitter, symbols and their relationships get extracted, and the result lands in a local .sense/ directory. Install with curl -fsSL https://luuuc.github.io/sense/install.sh | sh, grab a release binary for your OS, or build it with Go 1.26 or newer via go install github.com/luuuc/sense/cmd/sense@latest.
The server is built for structural questions. Hunting down a log string or a literal is still a job for plain grep, and the ripgrep text fallback only partly covers that ground. Dead code and blast radius, on the other hand, are out of reach without a graph.
What it helps with
- trace every caller of a function without opening file after file
- work out what a change to a module will break
- sweep dead code out of a repository
- match new code to the conventions already in the project
- find a spot by meaning rather than by exact string
Example prompts for the agent
- Who calls
parse_configin this repo? - What's the blast radius of changes in
src/api/handlers.go? - Find examples of model usage in this project and describe the conventions
How to install Sense
Install
The MCP registry has no launch command for it: see the repository README
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 Sense
How do I install Sense in Claude Code?
Install the binary first: curl -fsSL https://luuuc.github.io/sense/install.sh | sh. Then index your project with cd /path/to/project && sense scan and register the server as an MCP in your Claude config.
What does Sense do?
It builds a symbol graph and a semantic search index from your source, then serves both to the agent through four MCP tools. The agent gets structure, not just file text.
Does it need an API key or a cloud account?
No. The index lives in .sense/ on your disk and the server runs locally, sending nothing out.
