Local semantic search — embedding-powered grep for files, zero external services.
Runs on your machine from its package; the steps are below.
At most: creates or changes data: records, files, settings.
Odel charges nothing per call. The publisher may charge for its own service.
Runs locally over stdio
This server isn't hosted — your MCP client launches it from a package registry. Use one of the commands below, or drop the config into your client (e.g. Claude Desktop).
Run
uvx embgrep
MCP client config
{
"mcpServers": {
"embgrep": {
"command": "uvx",
"args": [
"embgrep"
]
}
}
}Local semantic search — embedding-powered grep for files, zero external services.
Search your codebase and documentation by meaning, not just keywords. embgrep indexes files into local embeddings and lets you run semantic queries — no API keys, no cloud services, no vector database servers.
.py, .js, .ts, .java, .go, .rs, .md, .txt, .yaml, .json, .toml, and morepip install embgrep # core (fastembed + numpy)
pip install embgrep[cli] # + click/rich CLI
pip install embgrep[mcp] # + FastMCP server
pip install embgrep[all] # everything
from embgrep import EmbGrep
eg = EmbGrep()
# Index a directory
eg.index("./my-project", patterns=["*.py", "*.md"])
# Semantic search
results = eg.search("database connection pooling", top_k=5)
for r in results:
print(f"{r.file_path}:{r.line_start}-{r.line_end} (score: {r.score:.4f})")
print(f" {r.chunk_text[:80]}...")
# Incremental update (only changed files)
eg.update()
# Index statistics
status = eg.status()
print(f"{status.total_files} files, {status.total_chunks} chunks, {status.index_size_mb} MB")
eg.close()
# Index a project
embgrep index ./my-project --patterns "*.py,*.md"
# Search
embgrep search "error handling patterns"
# Filter by file type
embgrep search "async database query" --path-filter "%.py"
# Check status
embgrep status
# Update changed files
embgrep update
import embgrep
embgrep.index("./src")
results = embgrep.search("authentication middleware")
status = embgrep.status()
embgrep.update()
Add to your Claude Desktop / MCP client configuration:
{
"mcpServers": {
"embgrep": {
"command": "embgrep-mcp"
}
}
}
Or with uvx:
{
"mcpServers": {
"embgrep": {
"command": "uvx",
"args": ["--from", "embgrep[mcp]", "embgrep-mcp"]
}
}
}
| Tool | Description |
|---|---|
index_directory | Index files in a directory for semantic search |
semantic_search | Search indexed files using natural language |
index_status | Get current index statistics |
update_index | Incremental update — re-index changed files only |
flowchart TD
A["📁 Files"] --> B["Smart Chunking\ncode: function-level\ndocs: heading-level"]
B --> C["fastembed\nlocal embeddings"]
C --> D["SQLite\nvector index"]
D --> E["🔍 Query"]
E --> F["Cosine Similarity\nranked results"]
F --> G["✅ Matches\nwith context"]
Chunking — Files are split into semantically meaningful chunks:
.py, .js, .ts, etc.): split by function/class boundaries.md, .txt): split by headings or paragraph breaksEmbedding — Each chunk is converted to a 384-dimensional vector using BGE-small-en-v1.5 via ONNX Runtime (no PyTorch needed)
Storage — Embeddings are stored as BLOBs in a local SQLite database
Search — Query text is embedded and compared against all chunks using cosine similarity
| Parameter | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
db_path | ~/.local/share/embgrep/embgrep.db | SQLite database location |
model | BAAI/bge-small-en-v1.5 | fastembed model name |
max_chunk_size | 1000 chars | Maximum chunk size for fixed-size splitting |
top_k | 5 | Number of search results |
| Package | Description |
|---|---|
| markgrab | HTML/YouTube/PDF/DOCX to LLM-ready markdown |
| snapgrab | URL to screenshot + metadata |
| docpick | OCR + LLM document structure extraction |
| browsegrab | Local LLM browser agent |
| feedkit | RSS feed collection + MCP |
| embgrep | Local semantic search for files |
MIT
Part of the QuartzUnit ecosystem — composable Python libraries for data collection, extraction, search, and AI agent safety.