MCP Integration

cdg mcp is an MCP server that lets a coding agent request the same context you would paste. It is listed in the MCP registry as io.github.NaNIsaac/codigest.

Register it

Claude Code:

claude mcp add --scope user codigest -- cdg mcp

Other clients (Cursor, VS Code, Claude Desktop): add a stdio server with command cdg and args ["mcp"]. Most clients take a configuration of this shape:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "codigest": {
      "command": "cdg",
      "args": ["mcp"]
    }
  }
}

The server works on the project it was started in: its working directory is the project. Clients that start servers in the project folder need nothing more. If yours starts them elsewhere, set the working directory in the client's server settings.

Tools

Tool	Returns	Arguments
pack	Last failure, the files it names, changes and their imports, cut to a budget	targets, with, budget, message
terminal_history	Recent commands with output and exit code	count, failed, here
scan	Project snapshot	path, targets, resolve, message
diff	Text changes since the baseline	path, message
semdiff	Function and class level changes since the baseline	path, message
digest	Signatures and docstrings only	path, message
tree	Directory tree	path

The tools return the same text the CLI prints. Each one runs the regular command with -s --no-copy, so an agent sees exactly what you would paste, and the clipboard is never used. See Output Formats.

Arguments

• targets: a list of files or folders. For pack, those are included first, and naming files turns the automatic sources off, as on the command line.
• with: for pack, a list of any of failure, changes, tests, imports. Default: all of them, or none when targets are given.
• budget: for pack, an estimated token budget. Default 30000, minimum 1000.
• message: an instruction embedded in the output.
• resolve: for scan, follow imports of the targets.
• path: a project directory, relative to the server's working directory.
• count: for terminal_history, how many recent commands. Default 1.
• failed: for terminal_history, only commands that exited non-zero. Default false.
• here: for terminal_history, only commands run in the project or below. Default true.

scan through MCP never stops to ask about size.

Limits

• None of the tools moves the baseline. Only you set it with cdg mark.
• Paths outside the project the server was started in are refused, including through symlinks and junctions. The tool returns an error instead.
• Errors come back as tool results marked as errors, not as protocol errors, so the agent can read the reason.
• terminal_history needs captures, made with cdg cap or the shell hook. With none at all it returns a message saying so, unless asked with here=false and failed=false, in which case it falls back to the shell history: commands only, with secrets masked.

The protocol

The server is a small JSON-RPC loop over stdio, one message per line. It answers initialize, tools/list, tools/call and ping, and ignores notifications. There is no MCP SDK dependency.

Listing the tools by hand:

printf '%s\n' \
  '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"initialize","params":{"protocolVersion":"2025-06-18","capabilities":{},"clientInfo":{"name":"t","version":"0"}}}' \
  '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":2,"method":"tools/list"}' | cdg mcp

The second response lists, in this order: terminal_history, pack, scan, diff, semdiff, digest, tree.