ClawDEA

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Native Claude Code integration for IntelliJ IDEA. ClawDEA's standout capability is a self-maintaining project wiki — a knowledge layer that stays in sync with your code, ships an orientation primer with every turn, and is ready to share across a team via git. On top of that it adds JVM profiling as a diagnostic loop (Claude reads JFR/heap analysis and proposes source-level fixes), plus IDE-grade code navigation, edit review, and debugging — all without leaving the IDE.

ClawDEA also coexists with IntelliJ's own bundled MCP server: when you enable it, ClawDEA steps aside for the handful of overlapping tools and keeps serving the ones with no IDE-native equivalent (see Features).

Claude autonomously debugging a Java application — breakpoints, stepping, variable inspection, and runtime mutation

Install from release

1. Download ClawDEA-<version>.zip from the link above.
2. In IntelliJ: Settings → Plugins → ⚙ → Install Plugin from Disk…
3. Select the zip and restart.

Features

Knowledge layer (self-maintaining wiki) — A project-local wiki under .clawdea/wiki/ (auto-generated REPO_STATE.md, concept pages, primer) that keeps itself in sync with the code: a commit-driven drift detector notices when a page's claims go stale, and a bundled wiki-author subagent drafts the fix — with Auto-update wiki on drift enabled it lands edits unattended in the background. The primer ships with every turn so Claude starts each conversation already oriented — no "let me explore the codebase first". A bundled wiki-librarian subagent answers project-design questions in its own fresh context, citing concept pages and verifying claims against current source. Team-ready: run /wiki-relocate docs/llm-wiki to commit the wiki path to .clawdea/config.json; teammates auto-discover the shared wiki on clone, with per-user vs team-shared drift state split automatically. /seed-workspace assembles a multi-repo manifest for cross-repo navigation via read_sibling_wiki / read_sibling_repo_state. See the User Guide for details. Check out ClawDEA's own self-maintained wiki at https://github.com/adobe/ClawDEA/blob/main/docs/llm-wiki/index.md

Profiling — Claude can profile your code via JDK Flight Recorder: launch tests or run configurations with JFR instrumentation, then analyze CPU hotspots, allocation pressure, and memory leaks. Three entry points: /profile slash command, gutter icon on @Test methods, or imported .jfr/.hprof files. Claude reads the analysis results and proposes source-level fixes — a closed diagnostic loop from "this is slow" to a concrete patch.

Chat panel — Streams Claude responses with Markdown, code blocks, tool-use cards, and clickable code references that navigate to source. Open from Tools → Toggle ClawDEA Chat (assign your own shortcut in Keymap settings).

Code navigation & MCP server — A local server exposes IntelliJ's indices as MCP tools: find files, usages, callers, implementations, supertypes, resolve symbols, read diagnostics, literal/regex content search, and cross-project navigation via list_workspace_repos / read_sibling_wiki / read_sibling_repo_state when a workspace manifest is present.

Coexists with IntelliJ's bundled MCP server. When you enable IntelliJ's own MCP server, ClawDEA automatically stops serving the four tools the IDE already covers (search_text, find_files, resolve_symbol, get_diagnostics) so Claude isn't carrying duplicate-capability tools. ClawDEA keeps serving the tools the IDE's MCP server has no equivalent for, which is most of them: the usage/caller/type-hierarchy graph (find_usages, find_callers, find_implementations, find_supertypes, find_related_types), ownership-tracked debugging (your breakpoints are never deleted), diff-gated edit review (proposed edits open a review dialog instead of being applied silently), JFR profiling, the knowledge layer and wiki tools, and cross-repo workspace navigation. Detection is fail-open — if it can't read the IDE setting, it keeps all tools registered.

Debugger integration — 21 MCP tools let Claude drive IntelliJ's debugger: launch sessions, set breakpoints (with conditions and log expressions), step through code, inspect variables, evaluate expressions, and modify values at runtime. Breakpoint ownership tracking ensures your breakpoints are never deleted.

Edit review — When "Auto-accept Edits" is off, each proposed change opens a native IntelliJ diff dialog with Accept/Reject. Built-in Edit/Write calls that slip through are caught by a fallback layer with inline buttons and file revert.

Tool permissions — Three approval modes (Confirm all / Allow safe / Allow all). When the CLI requests permission for a tool call, ClawDEA honors Claude Code permissions.allow / permissions.deny rules first; otherwise an inline permission card appears in the chat tab that triggered the tool call (multi-panel routing) with Allow / Always allow / Deny buttons. The CLI blocks until you decide.

@ mentions — Type @ for inline autocomplete (open editor tabs + recently git-modified files); press @ then Tab to open a full picker with grouped Files and Symbols sections, backed by IntelliJ's filename and short-name caches.

Inline completions — Tab-completions powered by the Claude API, using editor context gathered by the context engine.

Intention actions (Alt+Enter) — Explain, Optimize, Generate Test, Security Check, Add Documentation, Refactor, Ask Claude, Fix with Claude.

Slash commands — /stop, /clear, /mode, /cost, /compact, /context, /resume, /skills, /login, /cc, /init, /profile, /callers, /usages, /implementations, /supertypes, /refresh-view, knowledge-layer commands (/note, /promote-to-wiki, /learn, /seed-wiki, /refresh-wiki, /wiki-audit, /wiki-gap, /wiki-relocate, /seed-workspace), plus Claude Code skills discovered at runtime.

Session resume — Pick up a previous Claude Code session with conversation history replayed in the chat panel.

Requirements

• IntelliJ IDEA 2026.1+
• Java 21
• Claude Code CLI installed (npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code)
• Anthropic API key, Claude subscription, or AWS Bedrock / Google Vertex credentials

Quick Start

1. Install the CLI: npm install -g @anthropic-ai/claude-code
2. Install the plugin from a release zip (or build from source — see below).
3. Open Settings → Tools → ClawDEA and configure your API key or sign in with a Claude subscription.
4. Press Cmd+\ to open the chat panel and start coding.

See the User Guide for detailed configuration, slash commands, debugger workflows, and troubleshooting.

Development

./gradlew runIde                           # Launch sandboxed IDE with the plugin
./gradlew test                             # Unit tests
./gradlew build -x buildSearchableOptions  # Full build (skip searchable options if IDE is running)

Project Structure

src/main/kotlin/com/adobe/clawdea/
  actions/       Intention actions, context menu, keyboard shortcuts
  chat/          ChatPanel, MessageRenderer, EditDiffReviewer, EditReviewCoordinator
  cli/           CliProcess, CliBridge, CliEventParser, stream-json protocol
  commands/      Slash command registry and handlers
  completions/   Inline completion provider
  context/       Context engine for gathering editor state
  debug/         DebugBridge, McpDebugTools, BreakpointTracker, SuspendGate
  gateway/       Claude API gateway for completions
  knowledge/     Drift detection, wiki maintenance, wiki-author auto-apply
  mcp/           MCP HTTP server, tool router, index/IDE/context/edit-review tools
  profiling/     JFR backend, CPU/allocation/leak analysis, MCP profiling tools
  settings/      Plugin settings and configurable UI
  skills/        Skill scanner and picker dialog

scripts/drift/   Claude Code drift monitoring (watchlist, snapshot collector, issue filer)
.github/workflows/claude-code-drift.yml   Weekly drift digest workflow
src/test/resources/cli-fixtures/   Recorded NDJSON fixture replayed by CliFixtureReplayTest

Staying in sync with Claude Code

ClawDEA wraps the Claude Code CLI as a subprocess. To catch upstream changes (new flags, renamed stream-json fields, MCP config schema additions) without manual scanning, the repo runs a two-part monitoring system:

• A weekly drift digest (.github/workflows/claude-code-drift.yml) diffs claude --help, sub-command help, npm version, and selected docs URLs against a moving git tag (drift-snapshot); files an issue when a watchlisted regex matches a changed line.
• A PR-time fixture replay test (CliFixtureReplayTest) replays a recorded NDJSON transcript through CliEventParser; goes red if a new event type appears upstream.

See docs/drift-monitoring.md for the full operator guide — adding watchlist entries, triaging auto-filed issues, refreshing the fixture, reseeding the snapshot tag.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Read CONTRIBUTING for details on the contribution process and the Code of Conduct that all contributors are expected to follow.

All contributors must sign the Adobe Contributor License Agreement before their pull requests can be merged.

Security

See SECURITY.md for our vulnerability disclosure process. Please do not report security issues through GitHub issues.

License

ClawDEA is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. See LICENSE for the full text and NOTICE for required attributions.

"Claude" and "Claude Code" are trademarks of Anthropic, PBC. "IntelliJ", "IntelliJ IDEA", and "JetBrains" are trademarks of JetBrains s.r.o. References to these names in this project are factual identifiers of third-party products this plugin integrates with, and are not claims of affiliation with or endorsement by their respective owners.