Claude and Pi both refuse to use codebase-memory-mcp, at all

[mindplay-dk]

Whatever is included in the MCP instructions is not enough to encourage Opus 5 to actually use the MCP tools provided by codebase-memory-mcp.

I have tried adding system prompt instructions to Pi to encourage using it, and it just doesn't do it.

Opus 5 likes bash, and it wants to use it for everything, whether in Claude or in Pi.

I have done several rounds of post mortem on a long codebase exploration, getting it to update it's own system prompt with more encouragement and instructions to make it use these tools, but it just doesn't do it.

Sometimes it makes a single call to list_projects but then immediately reverts to bash calls for everything.

What are you folks doing to actually make it use codebase-memory-mcp?

I can't seem to come up with anything.

There's not much use in having these tools (and a pile of MCP tool instructions!) sitting unused on a shelf.

Is Opus 5 just a bad model for this? What are you using?

[mindplay-dk]

Just to add, I now have something like this in my system prompt:

You have powerful codebase topology tools available - use them for search, discovery and exploration, especially at the start of a session, before resorting to bash commands.

I've seen it make up to two calls during a codebase exploration at the start of a query.

I keep pasting the same prompt to see what it comes up with, and the cost always lands around $1.70 for this task.

It's actually cheaper to turn off codebase-memory-mcp.

I guess, for the claims about token savings and greater precision etc. to hold, it would need to actually use the tools more.

I'd love to hear how anybody makes their agent to do that?

For now, I give up. I've spent half a day on this, and my only result thus far has been burning extra tokens. 😐