mcp-trove-crunchtools 0.3.0

Self-hosted local file indexing MCP server with semantic search

mcp-trove-crunchtools

Self-hosted local file indexing MCP server with semantic search. Index any local directory (pCloud ~/AutoSync/, rclone mounts, ~/Documents/, anything) and search over the contents using hybrid vector + keyword search.

Features

• Hybrid search — Combines semantic vector similarity with FTS5 keyword matching
• Multiple file formats — PDF, DOCX, Markdown, plain text, source code
• Local-first — No cloud services, no per-seat fees, your data stays on your machine
• Lightweight embeddings — Uses fastembed (ONNX runtime) instead of PyTorch (~22MB vs ~2GB)
• Incremental indexing — SHA-256 checksum-based change detection
• Background mode — --index CLI mode for systemd timer automation

Install

uvx (recommended)

uvx mcp-trove-crunchtools

pip

pip install mcp-trove-crunchtools

Container

podman run -v trove-data:/data -v ~/Documents:/docs:ro quay.io/crunchtools/mcp-trove

Claude Code Integration

claude mcp add mcp-trove-crunchtools -- uvx mcp-trove-crunchtools

Tools (8)

Search (2)

Tool	Description
trove_search	Hybrid semantic + FTS5 search. Returns ranked chunks with file paths, scores, and content.
trove_similar	Find files similar to a given indexed file using its average embedding.

Index Management (3)

Tool	Description
trove_index	Index a specific file or directory. Skips unchanged files (checksum-based).
trove_reindex	Force re-index ignoring checksums. If no path given, reindexes everything.
trove_remove	Remove a file or directory from the index.

Status (3)

Tool	Description
trove_status	Index statistics: total files, chunks, disk usage, model info.
trove_list	List indexed files with metadata (size, type, chunk count).
trove_get_chunks	Show the text chunks for a specific indexed file.

Environment Variables

Variable	Default	Description
TROVE_DB	~/.local/share/mcp-trove/trove.db	SQLite database path
TROVE_PATHS	(none)	Colon-separated directories to index in background mode
TROVE_INDEX_WORKERS	2	Concurrent embedding workers
TROVE_INDEX_BATCH	50	Files per indexing batch
TROVE_EMBEDDING_MODEL	BAAI/bge-small-en-v1.5	fastembed model name
TROVE_EXCLUDE_PATTERNS	*.iso,*.zip,...	Glob patterns to skip
TROVE_CHUNK_SIZE	1000	Characters per text chunk
TROVE_CHUNK_OVERLAP	200	Overlap between chunks

Background Indexing

Set up a systemd timer to keep your index fresh:

TROVE_PATHS=~/Documents:~/AutoSync mcp-trove-crunchtools --index

License

AGPL-3.0-or-later