scalpel

Symbol-level codebase retrieval MCP server. Give an agent get_symbol(name) instead of a whole file — it returns just the definition and its usages.

Why

Reading whole files to answer one question about one symbol wastes context. scalpel avoids the read entirely instead of compressing it after the fact.

Related MCP server: Omniscience

Setup

npm install && npm run build

# index a repo (lang: ts | python | go, default ts)
node dist/build-index.js /path/to/repo /path/to/repo/.scalpel/index.db [lang]

# run the MCP server over stdio
node dist/server.js /path/to/repo /path/to/repo/.scalpel/index.db

Point an MCP client at it (stdio transport, args: <repoPath> <dbPath>).

Does it actually help?

• Token cost: ~96% fewer tokens than reading whole files, across 4 repos and 3 languages, holds up under formal significance testing.

• Real dollar cost: same story once billing/caching is accounted for, flat across weak/mid/strong model tiers.

• Does it fix bugs faster? No net advantage. Tested on 57 real historical bugs — an agent with scalpel's tools and a plain grep/Read agent fix the same bugs, at basically the same speed. This is the paper's headline finding, not a footnote.

Full numbers, every caveat, every negative result: RESULTS.md.