Narsil

Install the narsil-mcp binary using the method that suits your platform. Homebrew is recommended for macOS/Linux; Cargo works everywhere Rust is installed.

# macOS/Linux via Homebrew
brew tap postrv/narsil && brew install narsil-mcp

# Or via Cargo
cargo install narsil-mcp

# Or via npm
npm install -g narsil-mcp

# Or one-line installer (macOS/Linux)
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/postrv/narsil-mcp/main/install.sh | bash

Confirm that narsil-mcp is on your PATH and shows the expected version.

narsil-mcp --version

Narsil ships with three presets that control how many of its 90 tools are active. Use 'minimal' (26 tools) for lightweight editors, 'balanced' (51 tools) for VS Code or IntelliJ, and 'full' (90 tools) for Claude Desktop where context is less constrained.

Add the server block to your MCP client config file. Point --repos at the project directory you want to analyze. Add --git to enable blame/history tools and --call-graph to enable call-graph tracing.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "narsil-mcp": {
      "command": "narsil-mcp",
      "args": ["--repos", "/path/to/your/project", "--git", "--call-graph", "--preset", "balanced"]
    }
  }
}

For semantic code search that understands intent rather than just keywords, provide a Voyage AI or OpenAI API key and add the --neural flag.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "narsil-mcp": {
      "command": "narsil-mcp",
      "args": ["--repos", "/path/to/project", "--neural", "--neural-model", "voyage-code-2"],
      "env": {
        "VOYAGE_API_KEY": "pa-your-voyage-key"
      }
    }
  }
}

Place a .narsil.yaml file in your repository root to set per-project defaults so every team member gets consistent tool categories without passing long CLI flags.

# .narsil.yaml
preset: "balanced"
tools:
  categories:
    Security:
      enabled: true