repo-semantic-search

Semantic code search for any local repo, available to Claude Code as an MCP tool instead of grep.

What this is

A custom pipeline, built from scratch: CocoIndex chunks and embeds a repo's files (tree-sitter-aware chunking, Ollama for local embeddings), the vectors land in Postgres/pgvector, and a small MCP server (repo_index.mcp_server) exposes semantic search over them as Claude Code tools. A git post-commit hook keeps each registered repo's index in sync automatically.

An earlier version of this README described adopting a third-party tool, cocoindex-code, instead of building this. That path was abandoned in favor of the custom Postgres/pgvector pipeline described below, which is now built, registered with Claude Code, and verified end-to-end against a real repo.

Related MCP server: CodeSense MCP

Architecture

flowchart TD
    subgraph Indexing["Indexing (write path)"]
        Repo["Any registered git repo"] -->|git commit| Hook["post-commit hook<br/>nohup, non-blocking"]
        Hook --> CLI["repo-index CLI<br/>add / sync / status / install-hook / init"]
        CLI --> Registry["registry.py<br/>repos table"]
        CLI --> Flow["flow.py<br/>CocoIndex pipeline"]
        Flow -->|chunk + embed| Ollama["Ollama<br/>nomic-embed-text"]
        Flow -->|upsert rows, repoindex role| PG[("Postgres + pgvector<br/>code_chunks table")]
        Registry -->|repoindex role| PG
    end

    subgraph Querying["Querying (read path)"]
        Claude["Claude Code"] -->|semantic_search<br/>list_indexed_repos| MCP["mcp_server.py<br/>MCP server"]
        MCP -->|embed query| Ollama
        MCP -->|SELECT only, repoindex_ro role| PG
    end

Two independent paths sharing one Postgres database: indexing (triggered by commits, writes via the read-write repoindex role) and querying (triggered by Claude Code, reads via the read-only repoindex_ro role — the MCP server has no write path at all).

Setup

Prerequisites, in order — repo-index init (below) will fail with a raw connection-refused traceback if Postgres isn't running yet.

1. Create the venv and install dependencies:

   python3 -m venv .venv
   .venv/bin/pip install --group dev -e .

   Note: pip install -e '.[dev]' silently does not install the dev dependencies for this project's pyproject.toml — dev deps live in a PEP 735 [dependency-groups] table, not an extra. Always use --group dev as shown above.

2. Start Postgres (with pgvector):

   docker compose -f docker/postgres-compose.yml up -d

3. Install Ollama and pull the embedding model:

   brew install ollama
   brew services start ollama
   ollama pull nomic-embed-text

4. (Optional) Customize config: copy .env.example to .env and edit as needed. Defaults assume the local Postgres/Ollama setup above. TEST_DATABASE_URL (defaults to repoindex_test on the same Postgres instance) is used only by the test suite (tests/conftest.py), which truncates its tables between runs — keep it pointed at a separate database from DATABASE_URL so tests never touch real registered-repo data.

Components

• repo_index/settings.py — loads Postgres/Ollama config from env vars (DATABASE_URL, READONLY_DATABASE_URL, OLLAMA_API_BASE, OLLAMA_EMBED_MODEL), with sane localhost defaults.

• repo_index/registry.py — the repos table: which repos are registered, their filesystem path, and last-synced commit/timestamp.

• repo_index/flow.py — the CocoIndex flow that chunks files, embeds them via Ollama, and writes rows into the shared code_chunks pgvector table.

• repo_index/sync.py — orchestrates a sync run for one registered repo (resolve HEAD commit, run the flow, update the registry).

• repo_index/hooks.py + install-hook CLI command — installs a post-commit git hook that re-syncs a repo's index in the background after every commit, without blocking or failing the commit itself.

• repo_index/cli.py — the repo-index command-line tool (add, sync, status, install-hook, init).

• repo_index/mcp_server.py — the MCP server, exposing semantic_search and list_indexed_repos tools.

Adding a new repo to the index

.venv/bin/repo-index init /path/to/repo --name my-repo

init is shorthand for add (register in Postgres) + sync (chunk, embed, and index the current HEAD) + install-hook (wire up the git hook), in one step. Individual steps can also be run on their own, e.g. to re-sync on demand:

.venv/bin/repo-index sync my-repo
.venv/bin/repo-index status

status lists every registered repo with its path and last-synced commit.

Staying current: the git hook

install-hook (also run by init) drops a post-commit hook into the target repo's .git/hooks/. After every commit, it launches repo-index sync <name> in the background (nohup ... &), logging to .git/repo-index-sync.log inside the target repo, so commits are never blocked or slowed down by re-indexing.

Registering with Claude Code

The MCP server runs as a stdio process out of this project's venv:

claude mcp add repo-semantic-search -s user -- \
  /Users/shlomi.hassan/projects/repo-semantic-search/.venv/bin/python -m repo_index.mcp_server
claude mcp list   # should show repo-semantic-search - ✔ Connected

Registered at user scope, so semantic_search and list_indexed_repos are available as tools in every Claude Code session (after a restart — newly registered MCP servers only appear in new sessions). This coexists with any other MCP servers already registered (e.g. an earlier, unrelated cocoindex-code server from the exploratory phase); nothing here depends on or conflicts with it.

Verified working (2026-08-04)

Registered the MCP server (claude mcp list shows repo-semantic-search - ✔ Connected), then ran the full pipeline end-to-end against a real repo, ~/projects/go-ip2country:

• repo-index init registered the repo, indexed it (134 chunks across the repo's Go source, tests, docs, and README), and installed the hook.

• Made a real commit in go-ip2country; the post-commit hook fired, repo-index-sync.log showed a successful sync with no traceback, and repo-index status picked up the new commit sha automatically.

• Ran semantic_search (via an in-memory MCP client) for "how does the rate limiter work" scoped to go-ip2country: the top-ranked result (score 0.80) was the README's "How the rate limiter works" section, followed by the section on mutex locking/eviction — genuinely relevant, correctly ranked results.

Why semantic_search sets ivfflat.probes explicitly

The code_chunks table has a single ivfflat vector index shared across all repos, and semantic_search's repo-scoped queries filter with WHERE repo_name = $1 after the approximate-nearest-neighbor index scan. With pgvector's default ivfflat.probes = 1, this could silently return fewer than top_k results for a given repo even when more relevant matches exist in the table — reproduced directly against Postgres: a query with top_k=5 returned only 2 rows through the ivfflat index at the default probe count, but all 5 (including the actual internal/ratelimit/fixedwindow.go implementation) with either a forced sequential scan or ivfflat.probes raised to 10.

semantic_search now runs each query inside a transaction with SET LOCAL ivfflat.probes = 10, which restored full recall in re-testing (see below). This is a scoped, low-risk mitigation (session/transaction-local, no schema change); a per-repo partial index or an HNSW index remain possible future upgrades if recall issues resurface at larger scale, but aren't needed now.

CLI reference

repo-index add <path> [--name NAME]        # register a repo
repo-index sync <name>                     # chunk, embed, index current HEAD
repo-index install-hook <name>             # install the post-commit hook
repo-index init <path> [--name NAME]       # add + sync + install-hook
repo-index status                          # list registered repos + last sync