docent

Semantic + BM25 Document & Git history search for Design Decision Records — an MCP server that indexes documents and git history, letting agents query why code looks the way it does.

  files/git ──▼── index ──▶  MCP server  ◀──── query
                 (cache)        (HTTP)

Quick Start

docent init              # generate docent.toml config
docent index [path]      # index .md files + git history
docent serve             # start MCP server on port 7878

Open http://localhost:7878 for the built-in Web UI.

Usage

Command	Description
docent init	Generate a docent.toml config file
docent index [dir]	Index both file and git sources (default: current dir)
docent index-file <path>	Index specific files/directories
docent index-git <repo>	Index git history from a repository
docent serve	Start the MCP server (streamable HTTP)
docent list-models	List supported embedding models

Flags: --config <path> (default ./docent.toml), --rebuild (full re-index), --verbose.

How It Works

1. Sources — Reads markdown files and git commit history
2. Section-aware chunking — Splits documents into chunks, preserving heading structure
3. Embedding — Converts chunks to vectors via fastembed (configurable model)
4. Index cache — Persists vectors and metadata to disk
5. Semantic + BM25 search — Hybrid scoring with configurable algorithm
6. MCP server — Exposes search_ddr tool over streamable HTTP

Install

TBC

Or build from source — see Development.

Documentation

• Development Guide