Symbols MCP

Read, inspect and navigate through codebase symbols by connecting to Language Servers.

Introduction

By connecting to a Language Server of choice this MCP server makes it easy and efficient for coding agents to explore and navigate the codebase and its dependencies. The server offers a minimal set of tools, resources and skills intended to be simple to use and light on the model's context.

Tools

• outline: returns an outline of code symbols in a file, optionally with a small code snippet

• inspect: returns docs, declaration and implementation locations for a symbol, including third-party ones

• search: returns matching symbols across the codebase

• references: finds all references of a symbol across the codebase

• call_hierarchy: returns incoming and outgoing call relationships for a callable symbol

• rename: renames all references of a symbol across the codebase

• diagnostics: returns active diagnostics in a given file

• completion: returns contextual completions at a given location

• reload: reloads the effective config and reapplies it to currently running language servers

Resources

• language-servers://profiles: returns the configured language servers along with their state.

• language-servers://profiles/{name}: returns a more detailed view of one language server.

• language-servers://profiles/{name}/logs: returns the Language Server logs for troubleshooting.

Skills

• install-language-server: installs, configures, validates, or troubleshoots a language-server profile for the current workspace.

• language-server-navigation: guides symbol inspection, references, rename, diagnostics, and search through Language Server tools before falling back to text search.

Related MCP server: Serena

Installation

Agent Installation

Install the MCP Server, Agent Skills via Plugins and Extensions and then ask the agent to install any relevant language server for the codebase.

• Add Extension: gemini extensions install p1va/symbols

• Ask Gemini: Please install the language servers relevant to this codebase

• Add MCP Server: codex mcp add language-servers -- npx -y @p1va/symbols@latest start

• Add Language Server Skills: npx skills add p1va/symbols -a codex

• Ask Codex: Please install the language servers relevant to this codebase

Manual Installation

For manual configuration and language servers examples see here.

Development

• pnpm lint outputs the lint violations

• pnpm lint:fix attempts to fix lint violations

• pnpm format formats the codebase

• pnpm dev starts in development mode

• pnpm build runs the linter and build

• pnpm start starts the built artifacts

• pnpm test:unit runs the unit tests

• pnpm test:integration:{language id} runs the integration tests for a given language

Release

• pnpm sync:skills to mirror .agents/skills/ into:

  • skills/ for the Gemini Extension

  • plugins/symbols/skills/ for the Codex Plugin.

• pnpm version patch to bump the version and create the tag. Then:

  • pnpm sync:version to update plugin and extension manifests.

  • git push --follow-tags to push the commit and tag.