sylvan 1.8.0

Unified code + documentation retrieval MCP server

Sylvan

Code intelligence platform for AI agents. Search, analyze, and navigate codebases through MCP tools - returning exactly the code your agent needs at a fraction of the token cost.

Why

AI agents burn tokens reading entire files when they need one function. They grep across directories to trace a dependency. They piece together call chains one file at a time. Every wasted read costs money and context window space.

Sylvan indexes your codebase into a structured database of symbols, sections, and import relationships, then exposes it through 57 MCP tools. Your agent asks for what it needs and gets exactly that - function signatures, blast radius, dependency graphs, semantic search results. Typical token savings exceed 80%.

Dashboard

More screenshots

Search - find code by name, signature, or keywords with syntax-highlighted source

Session - live token efficiency tracking per session and all-time

Quality Report - code smells, security findings, test/doc coverage

Blast Radius - visualize impact before changing a symbol

Libraries - indexed third-party packages with symbol counts

Features

• 57 MCP tools for search, browsing, analysis, and refactoring
• 34 programming languages via tree-sitter
• Hybrid search - full-text (FTS5) + vector similarity with ranked fusion
• Blast radius analysis before any refactor
• Dependency graphs, call chains, class hierarchies
• Third-party library indexing (pip, npm, cargo, go)
• Multi-repo workspaces with cross-repo analysis
• Code quality reports - smells, security, duplication, dead code
• Web dashboard with live token efficiency tracking
• Multi-instance cluster support

Quick start

uv tool install sylvan

Add to your MCP client config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "sylvan": {
      "command": "sylvan",
      "args": ["serve"]
    }
  }
}

Your agent handles the rest - index a project, search for code, navigate with precision.

Upgrading to 1.8.0? Run a full re-index from the dashboard to build the call graph and repo briefing for existing repos.

Documentation

Full docs at darki73.github.io/sylvan

License

Non-commercial open source. Free to use, modify, and distribute with attribution. See LICENSE for details.