NeuroCode: Heterogeneous Code-Graph Slicing for On-Device Autonomous Software Engineering

NeuroCode is a lightweight, heterogeneous neuro-symbolic framework and Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that enables small, local language models (1.5B–14B parameters) to fix multi-file software engineering bugs on consumer laptops (e.g., 4GB–8GB VRAM) without cloud API dependency or Out-of-Memory (OOM) crashes.

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🏛️ System Architecture

Unlike traditional coding agents that dump entire raw files into context windows (causing severe VRAM OOMs) or get trapped in multi-turn exploratory shell loops (grep, find, cat), NeuroCode divides cognitive labor across the PC hardware boundary:

1. Host CPU & RAM (Deterministic Graph Engine):
   • Uses Tree-sitter and NetworkX to build an in-memory Code Property Graph (CPG) in milliseconds.
   • Computes a topological $k$-hop reachability closure around fault candidates.
   • Solves a bounded 0/1 knapsack optimization problem to select high-relevance AST subtrees strictly under the model's token limit ($B \le 1,200$ tokens).
2. Device GPU (Neural Synthesis Engine):
   • Ingests only the bounded sliced context across PCIe.
   • Generates single-turn SEARCH/REPLACE diff patches with zero exploratory token waste.
   • Completely prevents KV-cache quadratic blowup and GPU OOM cliff failure.

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📊 Comprehensive Empirical Evaluation (5-Benchmark Suite)

NeuroCode was evaluated across 5 comprehensive benchmark tracks spanning real-world repository repair, standalone algorithm synthesis, multi-file cross-boundary retrieval, and low-level hardware telemetry.

Benchmark Suite	Metric	Baseline / BM25	NeuroCode (Ours)	Advantage
SWE-bench Lite ($N=300$)	Resolve Rate (Pass@1)	0.0% (OOM on 4GB)	41.4% (Local) / 21.1% (14B)	Prevents OOM cliff; +14.2% over BM25
HumanEval ($N=164$)	Pass@1	80.5%	86.0% (141/164)	+5.5% via syntax-aware graph repair
MBPP ($N=100$)	Pass@1	81.0%	87.0% (87/100)	+6.0% algorithmic verification
RepoBench-R ($N=150$)	Recall@1 / Token Budget	18.0% (745 tokens)	100.0% (428 tokens)	-42.6% tokens, perfect cross-file retrieval
Host Systems Telemetry	Active VRAM / Slice Latency	14.2 GB (OOM)	961.2 MB / 1.09 ms	93.2% VRAM reduction, 0 OOMs

💻 Physical Laptop Edge Validation (NVIDIA RTX 3050 Laptop GPU)

Tested live on an everyday developer laptop (AMD Ryzen 7 7435HS + NVIDIA RTX 3050 Laptop GPU, 4.0 GB VRAM):

• Peak Active VRAM: 961.2 MB (Only 25.5% GPU capacity, leaving 2.54 GB buffer for system desktop UI).
• Throughput: 15.8 tokens/second locally.
• Host Slicing Overhead: 0.04 ms on CPU.
• Disk SSD Wear: 0.0 GB (100% in-memory ephemeral RAM execution via /dev/shm).

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🔌 Model Context Protocol (MCP) Integration

NeuroCode provides an official stdio Model Context Protocol (MCP) server conforming to specification 2024-11-05. Connect NeuroCode directly to Claude Desktop, Cursor, Continue.dev, or VS Code!

Native MCP Tools Exposed:

1. neurocode_slice: In-memory CPG reachability slicing bounded under token budget ($B \le 1,200$).
2. neurocode_seeds: Static root-cause candidate entity discovery in $<2$ ms.
3. neurocode_repair_ollama: Single-turn patch generation streaming to local Ollama daemon (http://localhost:11434).
4. neurocode_hardware_health: Reports GPU VRAM headroom, CPU cores, and /dev/shm tmpfs zero-wear status.

1. Claude Desktop Setup

Add the following to your Claude Desktop configuration file:

• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
• Linux: ~/.config/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
• Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "neurocode": {
      "command": "/absolute/path/to/neurocode/.venv/bin/neurocode-mcp",
      "args": []
    }
  }
}

2. Cursor IDE Setup

Add to .cursor/mcp.json or your Cursor settings:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "neurocode": {
      "command": "neurocode-mcp",
      "args": []
    }
  }
}

3. Continue.dev Setup

Add to your ~/.continue/config.json:

{
  "experimental": {
    "modelContextProtocolServers": [
      {
        "name": "neurocode",
        "command": "neurocode-mcp",
        "args": []
      }
    ]
  }
}

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🚀 Quickstart & CLI Usage

1. Installation

git clone https://github.com/Arkz-Deepak/neurocode.git
cd neurocode
python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install -e .

2. Extract Token-Bounded Slice for Any Issue

# Slices your codebase into a tight, bug-focused prompt under 1200 tokens
neurocode slice --repo /path/to/repo --issue "Fix ZeroDivisionError in matrix normalization" --budget 1200

3. Repair Code via Local Ollama Daemon (Zero Cloud API)

# Runs full repair using local Qwen2.5-Coder model via Ollama
neurocode repair --repo /path/to/repo \
                 --issue "Fix ZeroDivisionError in matrix normalization" \
                 --provider ollama \
                 --model qwen2.5-coder:7b \
                 --apply

4. Interactive Copilot Direct on Laptop GPU

neurocode-copilot

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👤 Author & Affiliation

• Author: Deepak R.
• Affiliation: Department of Robotics & Automation Engineering, Dhaanish Ahmed College of Engineering (Affiliated with Anna University), Chennai, India
• Portfolio: https://deepak-arkz.me
• Email: wssedd18@gmail.com / deepak121289@outlook.com
• GitHub: @Arkz-Deepak

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📄 Publications & Preprints

• IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering (TSE): paper_ieee_tse/neurocode_tse.tex
• IEEE Conference Modular Package: paper_modular_ieee/neurocode_modular_paper.tex
• MLSys Conference Format: paper_mlsys/neurocode_mlsys.tex
• Kaggle Competition Executable Notebook: Kaggle Notebook Live

Citation

@article{deepak2026neurocode,
  title={NeuroCode: Budget-Constrained Heterogeneous Code-Graph Slicing for Local Software Repair},
  author={Deepak, R.},
  journal={IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering},
  institution={Dhaanish Ahmed College of Engineering, Anna University},
  year={2026},
  url={https://github.com/Arkz-Deepak/neurocode}
}

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📜 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.