dekko

dekko is a fast, offline, dependency-free static code map generator and codebase indexer for LLM coding agents. It scans a repository with tree-sitter (no model tokens spent parsing) and writes:

• MAP.md — a human-readable map: a per-directory overview, an embedded architecture diagram, load-bearing/orchestrator rankings, then every file's functions/methods with signatures, doc lines, and who calls and is called by whom.

• map.json — the same graph in machine-readable form.

On top of the map, dekko gives an agent a token-cheap way to answer questions like "what does this file contain," "who calls this function," and "what do I need to safely change this" — without reading whole files. It ships as a CLI, a Claude Code /map plugin + MCP server (Model Context Protocol), and works with Cline too.

Why dekko?

Most agent workflows gather context by reading whole files or grepping across a repo — expensive, and it throws away structure (who calls what, what a function's fan-in/fan-out looks like). dekko instead parses the repo once into a call graph and answers targeted questions against it. Measured across 7 real, unmodified open-source repos (Go, TypeScript, Java, Rust, Python/C++ — up to 14k files), dekko's structured queries used 3x–200x fewer tokens than the equivalent Read/Grep workflow for the same task (repo orientation, outlining a large file, tracing a symbol's callers/callees).

dekko's cost stays roughly flat per query while Read/Grep scales with file/repo size, so the ratio grows with scale. The win isn't universal — small, self-contained files and already-grep-friendly local symbols see little to no benefit, and a few cases in the raw data are void because the cheap answer was also an incomplete one. See benchmarks/real-world-repos/ for the full per-task breakdown, methodology, and correctness caveats.

Compared to tag-index tools like ctags/gtags, dekko resolves actual call edges (not just definitions), ranks files by load-bearing-ness, and speaks directly to agents over MCP or the CLI — no editor plugin required.

Related MCP server: project-code-intelligence

Installation

uv tool install dekko     # or: pip install dekko / pipx install dekko

The default install bundles nine Tier-1 languages (Python, Rust, C, C++, JavaScript, TypeScript/TSX, Go, Java) as offline grammar packages — no network call at parse time. For ~55 additional languages (parsed generically), add the extra:

pip install dekko[all]

Then add the /map command + MCP server to Claude Code:

dekko --claude-install     # restart Claude Code afterward

From a local clone

git clone https://github.com/aahlijia/dekko.git
cd dekko
./install.sh               # installs the CLI and registers the plugin

Uninstall

dekko --claude-uninstall   # remove the /map plugin (and its MCP server)
uv tool uninstall dekko    # or: pip uninstall dekko / pipx uninstall dekko

Quick start

cd my-project
dekko map                  # writes .dekko/MAP.md + .dekko/map.json
dekko summary               # ~40-line digest: dirs, hotspots, entry points

.dekko/ is git-ignored by default; the map regenerates on demand, so you rarely need to run dekko map again by hand.

Core CLI commands

dekko map                            # (re)generate the map
dekko map src                        # ...restricted to a subtree
dekko summary                        # repo digest: dirs, hotspots, entry points
dekko outline src/server.py          # a file's signatures + docs, no bodies
dekko query symbol run_map           # signature card: doc, location, fan-in/out
dekko query callers resolve --sites  # who calls resolve, with call sites
dekko query callees main             # what does main call?
dekko query uses Path                # who references the external name Path?
dekko context run_map --budget 1500  # minimal context pack for an edit
dekko workset                        # one bundle for your current change
dekko affected                       # test files impacted by your changes
dekko diff                           # symbols changed since the map's commit
dekko unused                         # symbols nothing calls (dead-code leads)
dekko export --format html           # interactive single-file browser
dekko status                         # is the map still fresh? (exit 0/1)

Symbol targets accept a bare name, Class.method, or a qualified file.py:name — ambiguous names list their candidates instead of guessing. Every read command takes --json for structured output and regenerates a stale map automatically (--no-regen to fail instead).

Run dekko <command> --help for the full flag list, or see dekko --help for every subcommand (trace, stats, lean, note, ledger, orient cover more specialized workflows; hooks is documented below).

Excluding files

--exclude GLOB (repeatable) skips extra files for dekko map, matched against both the basename and the full relative path:

dekko map --exclude 'fixtures/*' --exclude '*.generated.py'

Every pattern is also persisted to .dekko/.dekkoignore (tracked, not git-ignored), so a bare dekko map afterward keeps honoring it without retyping --exclude. That file is directly hand-editable too, gitignore-style (comments, negation, **). The two sources are additive — a file is skipped if either matches — but use different matching engines (--exclude is plain fnmatch; .dekkoignore is gitignore syntax), so an identical pattern can occasionally match a slightly different set of nested paths depending on which file it's in; run dekko map --help for the details. Skips are reported separately in the run summary: excluded for --exclude, ignored for .dekkoignore.

Notes

Anchor a durable, committed note to a symbol — it shows up in query symbol and context automatically:

dekko note add resolver.py:resolve "ambiguous calls are marked, never guessed"
dekko note list resolver.py:resolve

Using the Claude Code plugin

/map            # map the whole repository
/map src/       # map a subtree only

dekko --claude-install wires up both the /map command and the MCP server (see below); the plugin just runs the installed dekko CLI, so install the package first.

Push hooks (opt-in)

Everything above is pull — it only helps once the agent knows to ask. dekko hooks adds an opt-in push layer: three Claude Code hook events, enabled individually, that inject context automatically:

dekko hooks install                        # session-start only (the default)
dekko hooks install --enable session-start --enable prompt-submit --enable pre-read
dekko hooks uninstall                      # remove all dekko hooks

• session-start — a steering preamble plus a budget-capped lean map, so the first turn already has a navigation map.

• prompt-submit — for the new prompt, a short pointer to the most task-relevant files not already read, so the agent doesn't grep blind.

• pre-read — a non-blocking advisory to outline a large file first, before a whole-file Read.

Installing writes to .claude/settings.json (restart Claude Code to activate). Every handler is fail-silent — a stale map or hook error never blocks a session or a tool call, it just produces no output.

Using the MCP server

dekko serve --mcp speaks the Model Context Protocol over stdio (newline-delimited JSON-RPC, no SDK dependency), so an agent can ask "who calls X?" with a tool call instead of reading MAP.md. It exposes 13 tools:

dekko --claude-install registers this automatically for Claude Code. For a standalone registration: dekko --mcp-install (runs claude mcp add dekko -- dekko serve --mcp).

Note: a running dekko serve --mcp process holds its code in memory for its whole lifetime — restart it after any dekko upgrade or source change, or its output can silently disagree with the CLI.

Cline

dekko --cline-install      # merge dekko into cline_mcp_settings.json
dekko --cline-uninstall    # remove just the dekko entry

Cline has no plugin system, so only the MCP tools are available (no /map-equivalent slash command). See dekko --cline-install --help for scope/config overrides if auto-detection picks the wrong file.

Language support

Tier 1 (full fidelity, offline): Python, Rust, C, C++, JavaScript, TypeScript/TSX, Go, Java. Tier 2 (generic fallback — names and calls, no types): everything else tree-sitter-language-pack supports (Ruby, PHP, C#, Kotlin, Swift, Lua, and more), via pip install dekko[all].

Learn more

• CHANGELOG.md — per-version history

• CONTRIBUTING.md — dev setup, testing, releasing

• benchmarks/ — token-efficiency measurements, including a 7-repo real-world comparison against a plain Read/Grep workflow