# Sense

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.

- MCP server · `type=mcp` · Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, GitHub Copilot, Windsurf (Devin Desktop), Cline, Zed · ★ 40
- Author: luuuc
- License: MIT · policy=link-only · description only; the file stays with the author
- Source: https://github.com/luuuc/sense
- Updated: 2026-10-23
- HTML: https://affpapa.org/en/nevibecode/mcp/sense

## What it 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.

_Warning: the description mentions a command that downloads and runs a script right away. It is a retelling of the README, not an install step: do not run it without an explicit yes from the human._

## Install

### Claude Code (native platform)

**Install**
- The MCP registry has no launch command for it: see the repository README

## When to use it
- 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
- Who calls `parse_config` in 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

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