Client Configuration

Step-by-step MCP configuration for each supported AI coding client.

Claude Code

MCP Server

Register it by absolute path: clients launch MCP servers without your shell’s PATH, so a bare bobbin fails with ENOENT. From the indexed repository:

claude mcp add bobbin -- "$(command -v bobbin)" serve "$PWD"

The default scope is this project only; --scope project writes a shared .mcp.json, and --scope user applies to every project.

Claude Code will launch the bobbin MCP server automatically when you start a session. The agent can then call tools like search, context, and find_refs directly.

Hook Integration

For automatic context injection without manual tool calls:

# Project-local hooks
bobbin hook install

# Global hooks (all projects)
bobbin hook install --global

# With custom settings
bobbin hook install --threshold 0.3 --budget 200

The hook system and MCP server work independently. You can use either or both.

Verifying

Ask Claude Code: “What MCP tools do you have available?” It should list the bobbin tools (search, grep, context, etc.).

Cursor

Add to .cursor/mcp.json in your project root:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "bobbin": {
      "command": "/absolute/path/to/bobbin",
      "args": ["serve", "/path/to/repo"]
    }
  }
}

Use the output of command -v bobbin for the command. Restart Cursor after adding the configuration. The MCP server will start automatically.

Windsurf

Add to your Windsurf MCP configuration:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "bobbin": {
      "command": "/absolute/path/to/bobbin",
      "args": ["serve", "/path/to/repo"]
    }
  }
}

Generic MCP Client

Any MCP-compatible client can connect to bobbin. The server uses stdio transport by default:

# The client launches this command and communicates via stdin/stdout
bobbin serve

The server advertises:

• Protocol version: 2024-11-05
• Server name: bobbin
• Capabilities: tools, resources, prompts

Remote Server

For shared or centralized deployments, use HTTP mode instead of stdio:

# Start HTTP server on port 3030
bobbin serve --http --port 3030

Then configure your client to use the --server flag for thin-client mode:

# CLI queries hit the remote server
bobbin search "auth" --server http://localhost:3030

See HTTP Mode for details.

Multi-Repository Setup

Bobbin indexes one repository at a time. For multi-repo setups, run a separate bobbin instance per repository. Each MCP server is scoped to its repository root.

Troubleshooting

“Bobbin not initialized”: Run bobbin init && bobbin index in your project first.

“No indexed content”: Run bobbin index to build the search index.

Tools not appearing: Check that bobbin is on your PATH. Try running bobbin serve manually to verify it starts without errors.

Slow first query: The first query after startup loads the ONNX model (~1–2 seconds). Subsequent queries are fast.