An MCP context engine for Claude Code, Cursor, Continue, and any other MCP-speaking agent. Brogrammer runs a local MCP server inside your editor and exposes your project's symbol index, semantic search, git history, and diagnostics as first-class tools the agent can call.

Your code never leaves your machine — Brogrammer only talks to localhost.

What you get

Thirty-plus MCP tools, all backed by the VS Code language server and a local vector index. Running a small local model? Set brogrammer.mcp.toolProfile to core to advertise only the ~14 highest-value tools — small models pick tools far more reliably from a short list. And when retrieval ever looks off, the index-status tool reports engine health (index completion, embedding coverage, exclusions) in one call.

codebase-retrieval — workspace-wide symbol search, ranked by TF-IDF, recency, cursor proximity, and open files (up to 80 symbols per call).
semantic-search — local vector search via Ollama qwen3-embedding:0.6b (1024-dim, code-aware, binary-quantised two-phase retrieval). Optional — the other tools work without it.
find-usages — real reference lookups through the active VS Code language server. Typed references, not grep.
get-problems / get-problems-for-diff — live vscode.languages.getDiagnostics() filtered by severity, scoped to a diff when you want.
commit-history / get-diff / get-branches / file-context — structured git context: recent commits, hot files, per-file history, branch diffs.
get-cursor-context / get-active-files — what you're actually looking at right now.
get-memories / add-memory / remove-memory — per-project memory store the agent can read and write.
get-rules — rules pulled from .brogrammer/rules/ and ~/.brogrammer/global-rules/.
list-components / get-component — opt-in component library from .brogrammer/components.json.
get-review-guides / write-review-findings — structured code review workflow surfaced in the sidebar.

No Anthropic key needed — Claude Code is the LLM. Brogrammer is the context layer.

Quick start

Install this extension from the VS Code Marketplace.
Sign in — click the Brogrammer icon in the activity bar → Sign in → approve in the browser. A 7-day free trial starts automatically.
Open a workspace. The MCP server auto-starts on 127.0.0.1:3333. The Status tab in the sidebar confirms when the symbol index finishes.

Register with your agent — pick one:

Claude Code (Linux/macOS):

claude mcp add --scope user brogrammer -- socat STDIO TCP:localhost:3333

Claude Code (Windows): the extension ships a small Node bridge. Get its path, then register it:

$ext    = Get-ChildItem "$env:USERPROFILE\.vscode\extensions\brogrammer.brogrammer-*" |
          Sort-Object Name | Select-Object -Last 1
$bridge = Join-Path $ext.FullName "scripts\mcp-stdio-bridge.js"
claude mcp add --scope user brogrammer -- node "$bridge" 127.0.0.1 3333

Cursor / Continue / Cline: point any stdio MCP server config at socat STDIO TCP:localhost:3333 (or the Node bridge above on Windows).

Verify. In Claude Code, ask "what does Brogrammer expose?" — the agent should list 30+ tools prefixed mcp__brogrammer__… (or ~14 if you set the tool profile to core).

Full walkthroughs, troubleshooting, and the optional local-model setup live at brogrammer.net/docs.

Optional: semantic search

semantic-search needs a local embedding model. The other tools work without it. Two backends are available:

Option A — Ollama (default)

# macOS:    brew install ollama && brew services start ollama
# Linux:    curl -fsSL https://ollama.com/install.sh | sh
ollama pull qwen3-embedding:0.6b

The extension auto-detects Ollama on http://localhost:11434. Change the endpoint or model in Settings → Extensions → Brogrammer.

Option B — Local ONNX (no Ollama needed, lower latency)

Drop any HuggingFace ONNX sentence-transformer into ~/.brogrammer/embedding-models/<name>/ (needs tokenizer.json + onnx/model.onnx), then set Settings → Brogrammer → Embedding backend → local. BGE-M3 (~570 MB) is the recommended model. See the local embedding setup guide for step-by-step instructions.

Pricing

Trial: 7 days of Pro, no card required.
Pro: individual subscription. See brogrammer.net/pricing.
Team: seat-based plans for organisations.

Device approval, subscription status, and team management live on brogrammer.net/app/billing.

Privacy

Brogrammer never uploads your source code. The MCP server listens on 127.0.0.1 only. The only network egress is:

Auth — sign-in via magic-link, GitHub, or Google against api.brogrammer.net.
License check — subscription entitlement, re-verified periodically.

Tool output (file reads, diffs, search results) goes from the extension directly to your agent's LLM provider (Anthropic for Claude Code). Brogrammer is not in that path.