manual

<p align="left">
  <img src="./docs/logo.svg" alt="sverklo" width="280" height="79"/>
</p>

<p align="left">
  🇬🇧 <b>English</b> · 🇨🇳 <a href="./README-zh-CN.md">中文</a>
</p>

> *"The map is not the territory."* — Alfred Korzybski
>
> Training data is the map. Your codebase is the territory. **Sverklo gives the agent the territory.**

**Local-first code intelligence.** Sverklo is the open-source MCP server that gives Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, and Zed a real symbol graph, blast-radius analysis, and git-pinned memory — so your AI coding agent stops hallucinating function names on large repos. The only code-intel MCP with a published benchmark and reproducible eval harness. MIT. Zero config. Your code never leaves the machine.

> **Local-first code intelligence** ◦ No cloud upload ◦ No embedding lottery ◦ Single MCP tool call

**43× fewer input tokens than naive grep**, single tool call vs grep's 7-12 — measured on 90 hand-verified tasks across sverklo, express, and lodash. F1 0.56 overall (leader), 0.73 on definition lookup. [bench:primitives](https://sverklo.com/bench/) is reproducible from a fresh clone with one npm script. Methodology + ground truth lives in its own repo: [sverklo/sverklo-bench](https://github.com/sverklo/sverklo-bench). [Paper](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19802051) · [bench:swe](https://sverklo.com/blog/bench-swe-first-results/) — 38/65 perfect recall on 5 OSS repos, **including the runs we lose**.

`blind grep` returns 17,000 tokens of regex hits with no ranking, no semantic recall, no call-graph awareness. `embedding lottery` returns chunks ranked by cosine similarity without verifying any of them are load-bearing. Sverklo returns ~470 tokens of ranked, traceable, call-graph-aware results in a single tool call.

### One-click install

[![Install in Claude Code](https://img.shields.io/badge/Claude_Code-Install_Plugin-CC785C?style=for-the-badge&logoColor=white)](#claude-code) [![Install in Cursor](https://img.shields.io/badge/Cursor-Install_MCP-F14C28?style=for-the-badge&logo=cursor&logoColor=white)](cursor://anysphere.cursor-deeplink/mcp/install?name=sverklo&config=eyJjb21tYW5kIjoibnB4IiwiYXJncyI6WyIteSIsInN2ZXJrbG8iXX0=) [![Install in VS Code](https://img.shields.io/badge/VS_Code-Install_MCP-0098FF?style=for-the-badge&logo=visualstudiocode&logoColor=white)](https://insiders.vscode.dev/redirect/mcp/install?name=sverklo&config=%7B%22command%22%3A%22npx%22%2C%22args%22%3A%5B%22-y%22%2C%22sverklo%22%5D%7D) [![Install in VS Code Insiders](https://img.shields.io/badge/VS_Code_Insiders-Install_MCP-24bfa5?style=for-the-badge&logo=visualstudiocode&logoColor=white)](https://insiders.vscode.dev/redirect/mcp/install?name=sverklo&config=%7B%22command%22%3A%22npx%22%2C%22args%22%3A%5B%22-y%22%2C%22sverklo%22%5D%7D&quality=insiders) [![Install in Windsurf](https://img.shields.io/badge/Windsurf-sverklo_init-09B6A2?style=for-the-badge&logoColor=white)](#windsurf--zed--vs-code--jetbrains)

[![npm version](https://img.shields.io/npm/v/sverklo.svg?color=E85A2A)](https://www.npmjs.com/package/sverklo)
[![npm downloads](https://img.shields.io/npm/dw/sverklo.svg?color=E85A2A)](https://www.npmjs.com/package/sverklo)
[![License: MIT](https://img.shields.io/badge/license-MIT-E85A2A.svg)](LICENSE)
[![Audited repos](https://img.shields.io/badge/audited_repos-47-E85A2A)](https://sverklo.com/report)
[![DOI](https://zenodo.org/badge/DOI/10.5281/zenodo.19802051.svg)](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19802051)
[![GitHub stars](https://img.shields.io/github/stars/sverklo/sverklo?style=social)](https://github.com/sverklo/sverklo/stargazers)

> ⭐ **If sverklo saved your AI from hallucinating, please star this repo** — it's the single most useful thing you can do to help others find it. Then [share with one teammate](https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=Local-first%20MCP%20code%20intelligence%20for%20AI%20coding%20agents%20%E2%80%94%20MIT%2C%20zero-deps%2C%20honest%20benchmark%20%40%20https%3A%2F%2Fsverklo.com%2Fbench%2F) who's tired of `getUserByEmail()` not existing in their codebase.

![Sverklo cuts agent context by 65 % vs grep — bench:primitives, 60 retrieval tasks, peer-reviewable](./docs/hero-token-comparison.png)

[![Watch the 90-second demo: terminal + Claude Code MCP integration](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/OX7aEgdlqhQ/maxresdefault.jpg)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OX7aEgdlqhQ)

> ▶ **[Watch the 90-second demo on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OX7aEgdlqhQ)** — `sverklo init` → `audit` → 37 MCP tools → live Claude Code integration with blast-radius and symbol-graph traversal.

![Sverklo demo — audit and badge](./docs/demo.gif)

<details open>
<summary><b>Updates</b></summary>

- **2026-05-04** — [v0.20.2](https://github.com/sverklo/sverklo/releases/tag/v0.20.2): parser brace-counter + lookup exact-match fixes. Lodash P1 0/10 → 9/10. Overall F1 0.45 → 0.56 (now leader on the public bench). [release notes](https://github.com/sverklo/sverklo/releases/tag/v0.20.2)
- **2026-05-04** — [Bench expanded

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