Psydcar

Psydcar lets your coding agents search your local notes, code, and PDFs.

Point Psydcar at a folder and it builds a local search index called a sidecar. Coding agents such as Claude Code, Cursor, or any other MCP client can then search that sidecar and quote the exact file, line, or PDF page that answers their question. Your files stay where they are. Psydcar changes them only when you edit them yourself in the dashboard. Agents get read-only access.

• Local by default. Indexing and search run on your machine. Nothing leaves it unless you turn on an embeddings provider.
• You choose what each agent sees. Each MCP connection is limited to the sidecars you select.
• Answers come with sources. Every result names its file and location, and says whether the file has changed since it was indexed.
• Stays current. A built-in watcher re-indexes files as they change.
• CLI and browser dashboard. Manage sidecars whichever way you prefer.
• Edit in the browser. The dashboard includes a Markdown editor with live preview and a code editor. A saved change is searchable by your agents right away.

Install

Psydcar needs Python 3.10 or newer and runs on macOS and Linux. Install it as a standalone command with pipx or uv:

pipx install psydcar

uv tool install psydcar

pip install psydcar also works inside a virtual environment. Check the install with psydcar --version.

Quick start

Create a sidecar from any folder, index it, and search it:

psydcar sidecar create "My notes" ~/Notes
psydcar sidecar index "My notes"
psydcar search --sidecar "My notes" "where are API tokens stored"

Search prints JSON results. Each result includes the matching text, the file path, its line range or PDF page, and an evidence_id. To re-read the current version of a result from disk, pass its ID to retrieve:

psydcar retrieve --sidecar "My notes" EVIDENCE_ID

Prefer a UI? Run psydcar dashboard to open a local dashboard at http://127.0.0.1:8765. You can create, update, and inspect sidecars there, edit their files, and prepare agent connections. Press Ctrl-C to stop it.

Connect a coding agent

Agents reach Psydcar through an MCP server that runs on your machine over stdio. Each server serves only the sidecars you pass to it. Find a sidecar's ID with psydcar sidecar list.

The easiest way to get a ready-made configuration is the dashboard. Open MCP connections → Prepare connection, select sidecars, and choose Copy JSON.

Claude Code:

claude mcp add my-notes -- psydcar mcp --sidecar-id SIDECAR_ID

Cursor, Claude Desktop, and other JSON-configured clients:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "my-notes": {
      "command": "/absolute/path/to/psydcar",
      "args": ["mcp", "--sidecar-id", "SIDECAR_ID"]
    }
  }
}

Use the output of command -v psydcar as the command value. Desktop apps often don't inherit your shell's PATH, so an absolute path is the reliable choice. Repeat --sidecar-id to serve several sidecars, and restart the client after changing its settings.

The server gives the agent two tools:

• search takes a query and an optional limit.
• retrieve takes an evidence_id and returns the current text from disk.

The agent can't widen its selection. Psydcar returns evidence, not answers, so the agent reads the sources and draws its own conclusions.

Keep sidecars up to date

Run psydcar sidecar update NAME after files change. It reports what was added, changed, deleted, or unchanged.

To update automatically, leave psydcar watch or psydcar dashboard running. Both watch every sidecar's folder and catch up on anything that changed while Psydcar was stopped. psydcar watch --once catches up once and exits. Psydcar doesn't install a background service, so changes are only picked up while one of these commands is running.

psydcar sidecar show NAME reports the last update, any files that need attention, and PDF pages without searchable text.

Edit files in the dashboard

Select a sidecar in the dashboard and choose Browse and edit files. The file list shows the sidecar's indexed text and code files. Open one to edit it.

• Markdown opens in live preview. Headings, emphasis, links, lists, task checkboxes, quotes, and code blocks render as you type. The raw Markdown appears on the line you're editing. Source shows the plain text. The file on disk is always plain Markdown, and Psydcar never reformats it.
• Code and other text files open in a code editor with syntax highlighting, line numbers, and search.
• Saving. Press Save or ⌘S (Ctrl+S on Linux). The file is written in place, and Psydcar re-indexes it right away. Line endings and a UTF-8 byte order mark are kept as they were.
• Changes from other apps. If a file changes on disk while it's open, the editor reloads it. If you also have unsaved edits, you choose between reloading and keeping your version.
• File list. The panel button in the editor toolbar hides the file list. On narrow screens, the file list opens as a drawer over the editor.
• Managing files. Create files and folders, and rename or move them, from the file list. Press F2 to rename the selected item. Deleting a file is permanent, and only empty folders can be deleted.

The editor works with the same files Psydcar indexes. Hidden files, symbolic links, skipped folders, and files over 2 MiB can't be opened or created there. The CLI and MCP server stay read-only.

Better results with embeddings (optional)

Out of the box, Psydcar uses keyword search that runs entirely on your machine. For semantic search, which matches meaning rather than exact words, connect any OpenAI-compatible embeddings endpoint. That includes OpenAI, a hosted gateway such as LiteLLM or Bifrost, or a local model server.

export OPENAI_API_KEY="sk-..."
psydcar provider set --base-url https://api.openai.com/v1 --model text-embedding-3-small --api-key-env OPENAI_API_KEY
psydcar sidecar update "My notes"

• Privacy. With a provider configured, updates send indexed passages to that endpoint, and searches send the query.
• Credentials. Psydcar stores only the name of the environment variable, never the key itself. Set the variable wherever Psydcar runs: your shell, the dashboard, and your MCP client's environment.
• URLs. The base URL ends before /embeddings. A local server without a key can skip --api-key-env, for example --base-url http://127.0.0.1:4000/v1. Plain HTTP to a remote host requires --allow-insecure-http.
• Fallback. If embeddings are pending or the provider fails, search falls back to keyword results and prints a notice.
• Managing it. psydcar provider show displays the current settings. psydcar provider clear removes the provider and its vectors and keeps the keyword index. Changing provider settings clears existing vectors, so run an update afterwards.

In the dashboard, the same settings are under Embedding provider. Test settings sends only a fixed test phrase, never your files.

Manage sidecars

Commands accept a sidecar's name or ID. To search several sidecars, repeat --sidecar. Run psydcar --help or psydcar COMMAND --help for every option.

What gets indexed

• Text and code: UTF-8 files up to 2 MiB with these extensions: .txt .md .markdown .rst .py .js .jsx .ts .tsx .json .yaml .yml .toml .go .rs .java .c .h .cpp .hpp .cs .sh .sql .html .css
• PDFs: up to 50 MiB, with text extracted page by page. Psydcar doesn't run OCR. Scanned pages without a text layer are listed as PDF page notices, and the rest of the PDF stays searchable.
• Skipped: hidden files and folders, symbolic links, unsupported extensions, and any folder named node_modules, __pycache__, dist, build, target, or vendor. .gitignore files aren't read.

Text and code are split into passages of up to 40 lines that overlap by 5 lines. Locations always refer to lines in the original file.

Reading search results

If a file has changed or disappeared, retrieve returns context: null instead of outdated text. After an update, changed passages get new evidence IDs.

Where data is stored

Psydcar keeps its index in one per-user folder:

• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/psydcar
• Linux: $XDG_DATA_HOME/psydcar, which defaults to ~/.local/share/psydcar

To use a different folder, set PSYDCAR_HOME to an absolute path. If you do, set the same value for the CLI, the dashboard, and your MCP client.

Upgrade and uninstall

Upgrade with pipx upgrade psydcar or uv tool upgrade psydcar. Your sidecars and their IDs carry over, and existing MCP configurations keep working. Restart a running dashboard or MCP client to pick up the new version.

To uninstall, run pipx uninstall psydcar or uv tool uninstall psydcar. To delete your sidecars as well, remove the data folder listed above.

Troubleshooting

Found a bug or have an idea? Open an issue.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md for development setup, tests, and the release process.

License

MIT