codingest

Parse polyglot codebases into queryable kglite knowledge graphs — tree-sitter parsers for 14 languages, call / type / inheritance / route edges, an optional markdown-docs pass, and multi-git-revision merged graphs.

codingest is the standalone home of KGLite's former in-tree code_tree component. The graph engine (storage backends, the Cypher pipeline, .kgl persistence) and the MCP protocol server are imported from kglite as cargo libraries — this repo owns only the code-tree component itself. Four surfaces ship from one workspace: a CLI, an MCP server, a Python wheel, and a Rust crate.

Documentation: codingest.readthedocs.io

Requirements — kglite ≥ 0.14

codingest builds against 0.14-only engine APIs (kglite::api::code_entities, kglite_mcp_server::run_with_code_tree_hooks) that KGLite added when it removed its in-tree builder. These are not in any 0.13.x release.

• Rust / crates.io: codingest cannot be published, and a checkout without a sibling ../KGLite cannot build, until kglite 0.14.0 is on crates.io. Local development uses a path dependency on the sister checkout (see Dependency policy).

• Python wheel: pip install codingest pulls kglite>=0.13 for the loader half of the handoff, but the builder half needs a kglite that understands 0.14 graphs. Install kglite>=0.14 alongside it.

Related MCP server: hangang-code-graph

Install

pip install codingest          # Python wheel (grammars bundled) — ALSO installs the `codingest` CLI
cargo install codingest-cli    # pure-Rust `codingest` builder CLI (no Python)
cargo install codingest-mcp    # the code-graph MCP server

The Python wheel bundles the codingest terminal command (the codingest-cli Rust library is linked into the wheel's extension), so pip install codingest alone gives you both import codingest and codingest build/status — the cargo install codingest-cli route is only needed for a pure-Rust install. This makes the pip-only flow pip install kglite codingest && kglite skill install self-sufficient (the installed code-review skill shells out to codingest build/status).

(All become available once kglite 0.14.0 is published — see Requirements.)

Quick start

CLI

# Build a code graph from a checkout
codingest build /path/to/repo
# → /path/to/repo/.kglite/code-review.kgl

# Build committed content at specific revisions (multi-rev merged graph)
codingest build /path/to/repo --revs v1.0 v2.0

# Check whether an existing graph is stale relative to the tree
codingest status /path/to/repo

Then query or describe the .kgl with kglite (kglite.load(...), the kglite shell, or any MCP/Bolt client).

MCP server

# Serve a live code-graph workbench over stdio for an MCP client / agent
codingest-mcp --root-dir /path/to/repo

codingest-mcp embeds the kglite-mcp-server tool surface (set_root_dir, graph_overview, cypher_query, read_code_source, …) and injects the codingest builder, so set_root_dir builds a graph. Running plain kglite-mcp-server against a workspace refuses to build — it has no in-tree builder anymore. See the MCP docs.

Python wheel

import codingest

g = codingest.build(".")                 # returns a real kglite.KnowledgeGraph
g.cypher("MATCH (f:Function) RETURN f.name LIMIT 10")
codingest.build(".", save_to="code.kgl") # also persist the .kgl
codingest.build(".", rev="v1.0")         # build a git revision (or revs=[...])
codingest.repo_tree("owner/name")        # clone a GitHub repo and build

The .kgl-bytes handoff. The codingest and kglite wheels are two separate compiled extensions and can't share live Rust objects, so build() constructs the graph with codingest's native builder, serializes it to a .kgl, then calls the installed kglite wheel's load() and returns that object — a genuine kglite.KnowledgeGraph, so every downstream kglite API works.

Bundled CLI. The same wheel also provides the codingest terminal command (a codingest/cli.py console-script shim forwarding into the linked codingest-cli library), so codingest build/status works straight after pip install codingest — identical semantics to cargo install codingest-cli.

Rust crate

[dependencies]
codingest = "0.1"   # needs kglite 0.14 on crates.io (see Requirements)
kglite = "0.14"

use codingest::build_code_tree; // = builder::run_with_options
let graph = build_code_tree(dir, /*verbose=*/false, /*include_tests=*/true,
                            /*save_to=*/None, /*max_loc=*/None, /*include_docs=*/false)?;
// Query with kglite's Cypher pipeline, persist with kglite::api::io, …

Workspace layout

CI-equivalent local gate: make gate

make gate is the single-entry-point local gate that mirrors CI (cargo fmt --check, cargo clippy --workspace --all-targets -- -D warnings, workspace build + test incl. the golden oracle) and adds codingest-specific checks (determinism reproducer, codingest_bench parity smoke, the wheel build + the tests/python acceptance suite). Run it before pushing. Individual steps are also targets (make clippy, make determinism, …); make fmt auto-formats.

The golden-digest oracle

KGLite deleted its in-tree code_tree builder on 2026-07-16, so the old two-builder parity sweep is gone. The authority it enforced was frozen while the builders were still verified identical, into per-corpus SHA-256 digests under crates/codingest/tests/goldens/ (committed fixtures — no network). The golden_parity test builds each corpus with only the codingest builder, digests a canonical exhaustive graph rendering, and compares to the frozen golden. The multi-rev fixture is guarded instead by rev_self_consistency. Regenerate goldens only for deliberate builder-behavior changes: cargo test -p codingest --test parity -- --ignored capture_goldens (details in crates/codingest/tests/goldens/README.md).

Dependency policy

kglite and kglite-mcp-server are path dependencies on the sister checkout ../KGLite with a version = "0.13" crates.io fallback. The fallback is kept at 0.13 (not 0.14) only because the local sister checkout is still versioned 0.13.4 while carrying the 0.14 APIs — a path dep's version requirement must be satisfiable by the path crate, so 0.14 would break the local build today. When kglite 0.14.0 ships, the maintainer bumps both fallbacks to 0.14 and flips the CODINGEST_KGLITE_READY CI variable (see the workspace Cargo.toml note and .github/workflows/ci.yml).

Parity with the (now-removed) in-tree component

codingest was extracted to be feature- and performance-identical to kglite's in-tree code_tree. KGLite removed that module on 2026-07-16, so parity is now enforced against a frozen record of its last-known-good output rather than live cross-comparison. See PARITY.md (stats-diff + timing), BENCHMARKS.md (build-time + Cypher benchmarks), crates/codingest/tests/parity.rs (the golden oracle), and docs/mcp-parity.md (the MCP↔builder coupling and the hook).

tests/python-legacy/ preserves KGLite's full 47-file kglite.code_tree behavioral suite verbatim as the dormant behavioral spec — the source of truth for what the Python builder guaranteed (see its README).

License

MIT © Kristian dF Kollsgård. codingest is an independent project; it depends on kglite at runtime but is not otherwise affiliated with it.