codedb
codedb is a code-intelligence server for AI agents, written in Zig and shipped as a native binary. It indexes a project and offers 21 MCP tools: file trees with symbol counts, structural outlines of functions, structs and imports, symbol lookup, trigram-accelerated full-text search, an exact word index, a reverse dependency graph, and atomic line-range edits with version tracking. A file watcher keeps the index fresh and a snapshot speeds up MCP startup.
The README is candid about status: it calls codedb alpha software whose API is stabilizing and may change, says the snapshot format may change between versions, and notes the HTTP server has no auth and binds to localhost only. Full parsers cover Zig, C/C++, Python, TypeScript/JavaScript, Rust, Go, PHP, Ruby, HCL, R and Dart, with lighter outline support for languages such as Java, Kotlin, Vue and SQL. It blocks sensitive files such as `.env` and credentials, and the macOS binaries are codesigned and notarized.
Install with `curl -fsSL https://codedb.codegraff.com/install.sh | bash`, which downloads the binary and registers it as an MCP server in Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI and Cursor, or run it through npm as `npx -y codedeebee mcp`. There are also an HTTP mode (`codedb serve`) and CLI commands such as `codedb search` and `codedb outline`. The README claims it is 538x faster than ripgrep on pre-indexed queries; that is the project's own benchmark. It is BSD-3-Clause and was last pushed on 2026-10-03. This review is based on the README and repository data; we have not run it ourselves.
Features
Why choose it
Trade-offs
Maintenance check
- Last commit
- 2026-09-29
- Commits, last 90 days
- 100+
- Releases, last 90 days
- 27
- Latest release
- v0.2.5860 (2026-09-27)
- Open issues
- 13
- Recent issues with at least one comment
- 8/8
Oldest week on the left; the latest four weeks are orange. Source: GitHub commit activity.
Status rule: archived on GitHub = Archived; last commit within 90 days = Active; 91 to 365 days = Slowing; older = Stale. All figures come from the GitHub API on the date shown.
Most discussed open issues
- #756 macOS: watcher burns ~60% of a core per MCP client on a 16k-file root with no worktrees (overflow re-hash + unconditional 2 s full-tree audi4 comments · 2026-09-20
- #767 repo size: ~208 MB of .zig-cache-local build artifacts are still in git history (GitHub reports ~90 MB)3 comments · 2026-10-03
- #766 index: SIGSEGV on worker thread during cold index of a non-git root; codedb.snapshot is also not excluded from the walk3 comments · 2026-10-01
Issue titles are quoted from GitHub. Open the link to check whether a problem still applies to the version you use.
Compatibility
Quick start
Use cases
Alternatives
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