Universal code search

Scout

The fastest, most universal code search for your LLM agent.

Scout is one MCP tool that searches any repository. It answers exact questions with exhaustive lexical search, exploration with ranked fuzzy search, concepts with semantic and hybrid search, and syntax with ast-grep patterns.

In our measurements Scout answered every text search faster than ripgrep - and every query reflects the tree as it is now, pending edits included. The numbers are on the benchmarks page.

No language toolchain, no project configuration. Works with any MCP client: Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, Codex, Gemini CLI and more.

Install

npx -y @glidermcp/scout@latest

Agent Prompt Recommendation

After connecting the server, add a product-specific instruction to the MCP client system prompt so the agent reaches for indexed search before shell grep, rg, or find.

System prompt snippet

Use the scout mcp find tool as the primary workspace search instead of shell grep, rg, or find. Strict modes (literal, regex, word) are exhaustive; fuzzy is ranked. If glider (C#) or tglider (TypeScript/JavaScript) is installed, prefer it for its language; use scout for every other language and as the universal fallback. Text search is the exception: tglider has no text-search tool, so literal and regex hunts in TypeScript and JavaScript belong to scout even when tglider is installed, and glider searches only the documents its workspace loaded.

Requirements

An MCP client that can launch stdio servers.
Node.js 18+ for the npx path - or no runtime at all via the install script or Homebrew.
A repository to search; any language, no project configuration needed.

Common Workflows

Find exact text with exhaustive literal, regex, or whole-word search.
Discover files and identifiers from incomplete queries with ranked fuzzy search.
Find concepts with semantic search or fused lexical and semantic ranking.
Match code shapes with syntax-aware ast-grep structural patterns.
Scope searches by path prefix, include/exclude globs, or language tokens.
Search right after edits - each query flushes pending watcher changes before it answers.

Run Modes

Stdio: the default and only mode in this release. An MCP client launches npx -y @glidermcp/scout@latest or an installed scout binary.

Update Policy

Each Scout release expires one month after its release date.

Use npx -y @glidermcp/scout@latest to guarantee the newest release; update global or binary installs before expiry.

npm install -g @glidermcp/scout@latest