Stop Claude Code from burning tokens on grep.
1 tool call instead of 7-12. Claude Code, Cursor, and Windsurf hunt your codebase with grep loops that burn input tokens and still hallucinate function names. Sverklo answers in one MCP call against a real symbol graph — running locally on your machine. 180-task bench across 6 codebases: 35× fewer input tokens than grep, F1 0.58 — overall leader (smart-grep next at 0.34, P4 file-deps win 0.84 vs 0.40).
Local-first, MIT-licensed, no API keys, no cloud upload. The code-intel MCP that ships its bench — the slice where sverklo loses to grep is on the same page as the wins.
/* 90-second walkthrough — terminal then live Claude Code MCP integration */
/* what happened when we published the bench */
A public benchmark, two competitors, fixes shipped on both sides in 36 hours.
- Apr 28 Published 180-task bench across 6 codebases with two competing local-first MCP code-intel servers (jcodemunch-mcp, GitNexus) and the slices where sverklo lost — including FastAPI P5 dead-code (0.00 vs grep's 1.00).
- May 2 → 3 jcodemunch maintainer @jgravelle shipped v1.80.7 / 1.80.8 / 1.80.9 against specific bench findings. P5 recall 0.00 → 1.00; lodash P1 0/10 → 9/10.
- May 4 Adding lodash to the bench exposed the symmetric blind spot in sverklo's parser. sverklo v0.20.2 ships the fix. Sverklo P1 0.30 → 0.73; overall F1 0.45 → 0.56 (now leader).
"the bigger opportunity here is the potential genesis of an 'MCP Server Arena' on par with what the leading AI/LLM/Chatbot arenas provide…"
— Jake Gravelle, jcodemunch-mcp maintainer, on r/mcp
Sverklo doesn't replace grep. It complements it.
- ✓ Exploratory questions ("how does the auth flow work?")
- ✓ Refactor blast radius (
sverklo_impact) - ✓ Large interconnected codebases
- ✓ Memory across sessions, tied to git SHAs
- ✓ Project audits — god nodes, dead code
- — Focused diff review
- — Exact string matching
- — Reading file contents
- — Build & test verification
- — Anything where you already know the symbol
Sverklo is the right tool when you don't know exactly what to search for. When you do know, grep is fine.
your agent
reviews like
a senior dev.
src/auth/session.ts
78
src/api/billing.ts
52
src/lib/jwt.ts
34
src/utils/clock.ts
12
v0.17 → the GitHub Action posts inline review comments on every PR alongside the sticky summary, anchored to the heuristic-flagged lines.
risk score
Every changed file gets a 0–100 score combining untested status, security-sensitive paths, importer fan-in, caller count, dangling references, and churn. Reasons are explicit — no black box.
missing-test detection
sverklo_test_map walks the diff, the import graph, and filename conventions to flag changed code without matching tests — ranked by risk.
dangling-ref check
Every removed symbol is checked against the symbol-reference graph. If a caller still exists, the merge is blocked with file:line evidence.
mcp prompts
Five workflows: /sverklo:review-changes, /sverklo:pre-merge, /sverklo:onboard, /sverklo:architecture-map, /sverklo:debug-issue.
benchmark/ — reproducible.
sverklo_impact render on React's most-called symbol. Sub-millisecond on every repo we tested — it's an indexed SQL join, not a 200-grep-match scan.
indexed.
ranked.
remembered.
+ filename / path channels
channel weights, path × 1.5
hybrid search
BM25 for precision, semantic embeddings for recall, PageRank for structural importance — fused via RRF. Faster and more accurate than grep.
local embeddings
all-MiniLM-L6-v2 via ONNX runtime. 384-dimensional vectors generated on your machine. No API calls, no data leaves your laptop.
pagerank ranking
Files that are imported by many others rank higher. Your agent finds the actually-important code first, not just keyword matches.
persistent memory
Save decisions, patterns, and preferences with git-state linking. Stale memories flagged automatically when referenced files change.
multi-repo + cross impact
One MCP server serves all your repos via a global registry. Trace how a change ripples across dependent repos. No per-project config needed — sverklo init in any repo, done.
configurable pagerank
Drop a .sverklo.yaml in your project root to tune PageRank weights, boost or penalize paths, and customize ranking to match your codebase's shape.
incremental
File watcher updates the index on every save. Dependency graph and PageRank recompute in real time. Always fresh.
eleven languages
TypeScript, JavaScript, Python, Go, Rust, Java, C, C++, Ruby, PHP, Vue.
your agent
finally
remembers.
sverklo_remember scope:"workspace" writes once, surfaces across every repo in the workspace.
sverklo init imports your existing project knowledge:
CLAUDE.md(12).cursorrules(3)docs/adr/001-prisma.mddocs/adr/002-auth.mdCONTRIBUTING.md(1)
v0.17 →
sverklo memory export pushes them to markdown / Notion / JSON.
bring your own docs
Auto-imports memories from CLAUDE.md, .cursorrules, AGENTS.md, CONTRIBUTING.md, and ADRs on init. Your existing project knowledge becomes semantically searchable instantly.
bi-temporal (unique to sverklo)
Every memory has valid_from_sha and valid_until_sha. Memories are never deleted, only superseded — so you can query "what we believed at commit X". Zep does this for conversations; sverklo is the only one doing it for code.
staleness detection
If a memory references a file that no longer exists, it's flagged as stale. No more advice based on deleted code.
semantic recall
Memories are embedded and searched the same way as code. Ask "what did we decide about auth?" and get the relevant memory.
auto-inject on session start
An MCP resource surfaces top memories to Claude before you type anything. Your decisions travel across sessions automatically.
only one tool
has everything.
| Tool | Code-native | Local-first | MCP drop-in | Git-aware memory | Symbol graph | Bi-temporal | Cross-repo |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ▸sverklo | ● | ● | ● | ● | ● | ● | ● |
| mempalace | — | ● | ● | — | — | ● | — |
| claude-mem | — | ● | CC only | — | — | — | — |
| Mem0 | — | crippled | SDK | — | — | — | — |
| Zep / Graphiti | — | Neo4j | ● | — | — | ● | — |
| Augment Code | ● | cloud | ● | — | ● | — | — |
| Greptile | ● | cloud | 3rd party | — | ● | — | — |
| Aider repo-map | ● | ● | — | — | — | — | — |
| Zilliz claude-context | ● | Milvus | ● | — | — | — | — |
| XRAY MCP | ● | ● | ● | — | partial | — | — |
The wedge: Sverklo is the only tool that knows what the code looked like when you made that decision — and warns you when the code has drifted since. If you want conversation memory, use mempalace. If you want your agent to actually understand a codebase, use sverklo.
Want a deeper dive? See side-by-side comparisons → against Serena, GitNexus, codebase-memory-mcp, Cursor @codebase, and Sourcegraph Cody.
three commands.
zero config.
questions,
honestly
answered.
How do I stop Claude Code from hallucinating function names that don't exist in my codebase?
Claude Code hallucinates function names because it generates from training-data patterns rather than your actual symbol graph. It will write getUserByEmail() when your code uses findByEmail(), invent imports for packages you don't depend on, and forget yesterday's design decision because context was compacted. Sverklo solves this with a 37-tool MCP retrieval layer the agent calls before writing code: sverklo_lookup resolves a name to its definition with file:line, sverklo_refs proves whether a symbol exists with caller context, sverklo_verify lets the agent re-check that a quoted span is still present at the cited git SHA. Install with npm install -g sverklo and run sverklo init — it auto-writes the .mcp.json so Claude Code starts using these tools immediately. Local-first, MIT-licensed, no API keys.
Why would I install another MCP server?
Most MCP servers are single-purpose wrappers around an API. Sverklo is local-first code intelligence: hybrid search (BM25 + ONNX embeddings + PageRank), symbol-level impact analysis, diff-aware PR review, and bi-temporal memory — all running on your laptop with no API keys. It works with Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, Zed, VS Code, JetBrains, and Google Antigravity, so if you already have an MCP client, sverklo just appears as 37 new tools alongside whatever else you run.
How is Sverklo different from Cursor's @codebase or Claude Context?
Cursor's @codebase indexing is cloud-based and tied to the Cursor editor. Claude Context (Zilliz) requires a Milvus database. Sverklo runs entirely on your laptop with SQLite and ONNX embeddings, works across every major AI coding agent via the MCP protocol, and adds symbol-level impact analysis and bi-temporal memory that neither offers.
Does Sverklo work offline?
Yes. The only network call Sverklo ever makes is downloading the ONNX embedding model on first run (~90MB, cached locally). After that you can disconnect from the internet and everything continues to work — indexing, search, embeddings, memory, dashboard. No telemetry. No cloud calls. Your code never leaves your laptop.
Which AI coding agents does Sverklo support?
Sverklo works with any AI coding agent that speaks the Model Context Protocol (MCP): Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, Zed, VS Code, JetBrains, and Google Antigravity. The sverklo init command auto-detects which clients you have installed and writes the right config files.
Is Sverklo free and open source?
Yes. MIT licensed and free forever. All 36 tools have no limits and opt-in telemetry that's off by default (see /security). A future Sverklo Pro tier will add smart auto-capture and larger embedding models, and Sverklo Team will add shared team memory — but the rule is "Pro adds new things, never gates current things." Anything in the OSS server today stays in the OSS server forever.
How do I install Sverklo in Claude Code?
Run npm install -g sverklo, then cd to your project and run sverklo init. That writes .mcp.json at your project root, appends sverklo instructions to your CLAUDE.md, and runs sverklo doctor to verify the MCP handshake. Restart Claude Code and the 37 sverklo tools appear in the /mcp list.
What programming languages does Sverklo support?
24 languages total. 10 first-class with structural parsing: TypeScript/TSX, JavaScript, Python, Go, Rust, C# (tree-sitter), plus Vue (SFC), Markdown, and Jupyter notebooks (custom parsers). 14 more via regex fallback: Java, C, C++, Ruby, PHP, Kotlin, Scala, Swift, Dart, Elixir, Lua, Zig, Haskell, Clojure, OCaml. Hybrid search works across all 24; symbol-level impact analysis is sharpest on the first-class 10.
When is Sverklo the wrong tool?
Sverklo is the right tool when you don't know exactly what string to search for. When you do know the literal string, plain grep is faster and more reliable. On a 30-file repo, you don't need Sverklo. It earns its place on large interconnected codebases where AI coding agents waste thousands of tokens reading the wrong files.
your agent is still guessing.
Give it a structural understanding of your codebase. Local-first, MIT, no API keys, no cloud.