mobile-docs-mcp

A version-aware documentation MCP server for mobile development — the context7 idea, but specialized for the thing generic doc proxies get wrong: which version of an API you can actually use.

Install: uvx mobile-docs-mcp (nothing to clone) — or pip install mobile-docs-mcp. Published on PyPI. Jump to Editor & IDE setup.

It indexes Android (Jetpack / androidx / Compose) and Apple (SwiftUI / UIKit) documentation with since / deprecated / removed metadata on every symbol, so an agent can verify an API exists on the version the project targets before writing code against it.

Why it's different from a doc proxy

Most "Apple docs" / "Android docs" MCP servers live-fetch and parse the current doc site. They answer "what is scrollTargetBehavior?" but not "can I use it on iOS 16?" — and that second question is where coding agents hallucinate. Every result here is filtered and annotated against a target version.

Related MCP server: devdocs-mcp

Tools

Example verdict:

verify_api_exists("scrollTargetBehavior", "16.0", "apple")
→ ❌ NOT AVAILABLE — introduced in 17.0, newer than 16.0. Will not compile there.

Run

# Recommended: fetch + run on demand, no install step
uvx mobile-docs-mcp

# Or install into the current environment
pip install mobile-docs-mcp
mobile-docs-mcp                          # stdio transport

# From source (for development)
git clone https://github.com/asif786ka/mobile-docs-mcp
cd mobile-docs-mcp && pip install -e .
python -m mobile_docs_mcp.server

Ships with a seed corpus, so it works immediately with no crawl.

Editor & IDE setup (iOS + Android)

The server speaks MCP over stdio, so any MCP-capable editor can use it. All the tools work for both platforms — you'll lean on the SwiftUI entries in an iOS project and the Compose/androidx entries in an Android one, but nothing is editor-specific. Two ways to launch it:

• Recommended (from PyPI): command: "uvx", args: ["mobile-docs-mcp"] — no clone, no cwd. This is what the examples below use.

• From source: command: "python", args: ["-m", "mobile_docs_mcp.server"], with cwd set to the repo path.

Set MOBILE_DOCS_DATA in env to layer in any corpora you've crawled with the ingesters (see "Growing the index").

Claude Code (CLI)

# published package, shared with the repo via .mcp.json (project scope)
claude mcp add mobile-docs-mcp --scope project -- uvx mobile-docs-mcp
# from source instead:  claude mcp add mobile-docs-mcp -- python -m mobile_docs_mcp.server

Verify with claude mcp list, or /mcp inside a session.

Claude Desktop

Edit claude_desktop_config.json (Settings → Developer → Edit Config), then restart the app:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mobile-docs-mcp": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["mobile-docs-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

(Layer in crawled corpora with "env": { "MOBILE_DOCS_DATA": "/abs/path/data/android,/abs/path/data/apple" }.)

Cursor

Create .cursor/mcp.json in the project root (or ~/.cursor/mcp.json for all projects) — same mcpServers shape as above:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mobile-docs-mcp": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["mobile-docs-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Then enable it under Settings → MCP.

Windsurf

Edit ~/.codeium/windsurf/mcp_config.json (Cascade panel → MCP icon → Configure). Same mcpServers shape; Windsurf supports ${env:VAR} interpolation so you can keep paths/secrets out of the file:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mobile-docs-mcp": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["mobile-docs-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Android Studio

Gemini in Android Studio is an MCP client. Go to Settings → Tools → AI → MCP Servers, tick Enable MCP Servers, and paste the same mcpServers JSON block shown for Claude Desktop. Confirm with the "Successfully connected" notification, then type /mcp in the chat to see the tools. Great for checking androidx/Compose availability against your module's compileSdk / library versions without leaving the IDE.

VS Code

VS Code's key is servers (not mcpServers) and wants an explicit type. Create .vscode/mcp.json (commit it to share with the team):

{
  "servers": {
    "mobile-docs-mcp": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["mobile-docs-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Open the file and click Start, or run MCP: List Servers from the Command Palette. Copilot Chat's Agent mode will then surface the tools.

Xcode

Xcode 26.3+ is itself an MCP server (it exposes build / test / preview / Apple-doc-search tools) rather than an MCP client — so you don't register mobile-docs-mcp inside Xcode. Instead, run an agent that consumes both: point Claude Code (or Cursor / Codex) at mobile-docs-mcp using the steps above while it's also connected to Xcode's server. The agent then gets Xcode's build/preview tools and this server's verify_api_exists version checks in one session — e.g. it can confirm scrollTargetBehavior needs iOS 17 before writing it against your iOS 16 deployment target, then build the project to check.

Architecture

ingest/  (batch, offline)          server.py  (runtime)
  android.py  developer.android.com   FastMCP
  apple.py    Apple JSON doc API        │
      │                                 ▼
      ▼                             store.py — hybrid, version-aware
  symbols.json + chunks.json          1. BM25 lexical recall
  (version-tagged)                    2. vector recall (optional)
                                      3. RRF fusion
                                      4. VERSION FILTER  ← the differentiator
                                      5. cross-encoder rerank (optional)

Retrieval is provider-agnostic (embeddings.py), same shape as a multi-provider model gateway: BM25 works fully offline; vector recall and rerank switch on via env var with no code change and degrade gracefully if a provider is missing.

MOBILE_DOCS_EMBEDDINGS=local   # or openai ; default none (BM25-only)
MOBILE_DOCS_RERANK=local       # default none
MOBILE_DOCS_DATA=data/android,data/apple   # layer in crawled corpora

Growing the index

python -m mobile_docs_mcp.ingest.android --out data/android \
    --refs androidx.compose.foundation.lazy.LazyColumn \
    --release-notes compose-foundation navigation

python -m mobile_docs_mcp.ingest.apple --out data/apple \
    --paths swiftui/navigationstack swiftui/view/scrolltargetbehavior

Then point the server at the output with MOBILE_DOCS_DATA.

Status

MVP. The protocol layer, version logic, hybrid store, and tool surface are production-shaped; the ingestion coverage is a seed. The real work — and the moat — is breadth and freshness of the version-tagged index.

MIT.