MCP Tools

zebraindex exposes six tools over the MCP stdio protocol. The project parameter auto-resolves to the most recently indexed project if omitted — you rarely need to specify it.

searchQuery

Search by conceptual intent using natural language. Best for: “what handles retry logic”, “where is fee calculation done”, “find session validation code”.

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
`text`	`string`	required	Natural language query
`project`	`string?`	auto	Project name, index number, or root path
`limit`	`int?`	5	Maximum results
`languages`	`string[]?`	all	Filter by language, e.g. `["rust","ts"]`
`pathGlob`	`string?`	—	File glob, e.g. `"src/*/.rs"`
`includeTests`	`bool?`	false	Include test files

{
  "tool": "searchQuery",
  "text": "retry logic with exponential backoff",
  "languages": ["rust"],
  "limit": 8
}

searchPassage

Find code similar to a snippet or error trace. Use when you have a concrete example and want to find analogous patterns elsewhere.

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
`text`	`string`	required	Code snippet or error message
`project`	`string?`	auto	Project
`limit`	`int?`	5	Max results
`languages`	`string[]?`	all	Language filter
`pathGlob`	`string?`	—	File glob
`includeTests`	`bool?`	false	Include tests

{
  "tool": "searchPassage",
  "text": "fn embed_query_async(&self, text: &str) -> anyhow::Result<Vec<f32>>"
}

searchDep

Exact symbol lookup with call-graph context. Use when you know the function or struct name. Returns the symbol body plus its callers/callees up to the requested depth.

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
`name`	`string`	required	Exact symbol name (function, struct, type, etc.)
`project`	`string?`	auto	Project
`depth`	`int?`	2	Call graph depth
`maxTokens`	`int?`	—	Token budget cap

{
  "tool": "searchDep",
  "name": "search_exhaustive",
  "depth": 3
}

fileTree

Returns the project file tree, optionally filtered by a glob pattern.

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
`project`	`string?`	auto	Project
`pathGlob`	`string?`	—	Filter, e.g. `"*/.rs"`

{ "tool": "fileTree", "pathGlob": "crates/zti-pipeline/**" }

projectList

Lists all indexed projects with their root path, file count, and chunk count. No parameters required.

{ "tool": "projectList" }

doctor

Runs diagnostics: hardware detection, model load status, index health, IPC socket reachability. Useful when debugging why search results are missing or slow.

Parameter	Type	Default	Description
`project`	`string?`	—	Optional: check a specific project’s index

{ "tool": "doctor" }

Search modes

searchQuery and searchPassage use different embedding prefixes internally:

Query mode — embeds with the query: instruction prefix (Jina, E5, etc.)
Passage mode — embeds with the passage: prefix; treats the input as code to match against

For models without prefix routing (BGE, GTE, MiniLM) both modes produce identical embeddings.