Explorerepo: Tool for agents to read remote Git repositories without cloning

A new Go binary called explorerepo lets AI agents read and search remote Git repositories over Git protocol v2 without cloning them or using the GitHub API, fetching only the trees and blobs a command touches via filtered fetch (tree:0, blob:none). In a benchmark using opencode and DeepSeek V4.1 Flash across 15 questions about repositories including ripgrep, the Linux kernel, Android, Chromium and Kubernetes with three runs each in a fresh container, agents with explorerepo installed made 52–57% fewer tool calls, used 53–63% fewer uncached input tokens and answered 45–66% faster, with every answer correct either way. On torvalds/linux with git 2.56.0, explorerepo took 1.7 s for 24 matches from a single git grep sched_tick versus 23 s for a blobless clone that left a 4 MB .git directory, while a depth-1 clone of the same repository downloads 291 MB in 33.7 s.

explorerepo lets an AI agent read or search a remote git repository without cloning it and without the GitHub API. It speaks Git protocol v2 over SSH or anonymous HTTPS and uses filtered fetch tree:0 , blob:none , the same server-side filtering as git clone --filter , so the server sends only the commit, trees and blobs a command touches. Requests go to the repository's own git-upload-pack , which GitHub and gists, GitLab, Bitbucket, Codeberg and googlesource.com serve. Install one Go binary and add a line to your global AGENTS.md or CLAUDE.md , and an agent that needs a single file stops cloning the whole repo. It runs ls , cat , head , tail , sed , grep , rg , find and more against the remote tree, over SSH or plain HTTPS. go install github.com/autowert66/explorerepo/cmd/explorerepo@latest Add this line to AGENTS.md or CLAUDE.md : To read or search the source of any remote git repo a library, a dependency, a tool you are asked about , run explorerepo --repo ORG/REPO -c '<script ' in your shell it is a CLI, not an MCP tool instead of cloning, fetching raw GitHub URLs, gh api , or answering from memory; it is a read-only shell over the default branch ls, tree, cat, head, sed -n, grep -A/-B/-C, rg, find, wc, sort, pipes, loops; no awk . Each call costs a network round trip, so aim for 2-3 calls: 1 orient and locate in one script, e.g. -c 'tree -L 2 -d; echo " hits"; grep -rn -m 30 "KEYWORD" src --include=" .rs"' ; 2 read every relevant range at once, e.g. -c 'sed -n "40,120p" src/a.rs; echo " b.rs"; grep -n -A 25 "fn name" src/b.rs' ; then answer. Prefer grep -n -A N and sed -n ranges over cat of whole files. --repo also takes gitlab.com/GROUP/REPO, gist:ID, any git URL, and --rev TAG ; explorerepo help lists everything. explorerepo help agents prints the same line, so explorerepo help agents ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md works too. A benchmark with opencode and DeepSeek V4.1 Flash covers 15 questions about real repositories, from ripgrep to the Linux kernel, Android, Chromium and Kubernetes, three runs each in a fresh container. With explorerepo installed, agents made 52–57% fewer tool calls , used 53–63% fewer uncached input tokens and answered 45–66% faster , and every answer was correct either way: Kubernetes's default eviction thresholds took 3.3 tool calls instead of 13.7. One model and one agent harness; docs/BENCHMARK.md https://github.com/autowert66/explorerepo/blob/main/docs/BENCHMARK.md has the tables and limits, and bench/ reruns it. Then agents work in place: explorerepo --repo octocat/Hello-World -c 'ls -la; head -20 README' explorerepo --repo github.com/torvalds/linux --rev v6.11 -c 'grep -rn "sched tick" kernel/sched | head' explorerepo --repo torvalds/linux ls kernel explorerepo --repo torvalds/linux pull drivers/gpu/drm/i915 ./i915 git clone --depth 1 downloads every file at the tip: 291 MB and 33.7 s for torvalds/linux see the demo above , for an agent that wanted one file. git clone --filter=blob:none --no-checkout --depth 1 is the closest alternative, and it works: git grep fetches the missing blobs on demand. On torvalds/linux with git 2.56.0, one run each, the clone plus one git grep sched tick took 23 s and left a 4 MB .git directory; explorerepo took 1.7 s for the same 24 matches. The blobless clone fetches the tree of every directory up front, leaves a repository to delete afterwards, and requires the agent to know the flags. explorerepo fetches only the trees and blobs a command reads and caches them between calls. raw.githubusercontent.com and the GitHub REST API return one file or one directory listing per request, and neither can grep. GitHub limits unauthenticated REST requests to 60 per hour per IP address GitHub docs https://docs.github.com/en/rest/using-the-rest-api/rate-limits-for-the-rest-api . Both are GitHub-only. In the small-repository set of the benchmark https://github.com/autowert66/explorerepo/blob/main/docs/BENCHMARK.md , 89 of the 196 tool calls in the runs without explorerepo were raw file downloads. git archive --remote is rejected by GitHub over both HTTPS and ssh. Hosted MCP servers expose a fixed set of tools. GitMCP's README lists four: fetch documentation, search documentation, search code through GitHub's code search , and fetch a URL. DeepWiki's MCP server returns pages of a generated wiki and answers questions about them read wiki structure , read wiki contents , ask question . Neither lists a tool for reading a line range of a file or listing a directory, and both need an MCP entry in the agent's configuration. explorerepo is a command the agent runs in its shell. gitingest turns a repository into one text digest summary, tree, contents to paste into a prompt. Sourcegraph's src is a client for a Sourcegraph instance and searches what that instance has indexed. explorerepo returns only what the script asks for, from any repository you can reach, at any --rev . - To install: Go 1.21 or newer. If your toolchain is older than the version in go.mod , go install downloads it automatically. - To reach a remote host: the system ssh with a key that can reach the host, or nothing at all for a public repository; explorerepo falls back to anonymous HTTPS when ssh is unavailable. - For local repositories and the test suite: git . The protocol probes recorded in docs/PROBES.md were run against GitHub and local git 2.56.0. go install writes the binary to $GOBIN default $ go env GOPATH /bin . If explorerepo is not found afterwards, add that directory to your PATH . To uninstall, delete the file. From a checkout, make build writes it to bin/explorerepo instead. explorerepo --repo octocat/Hello-World -c 'ls -la; head -5 README' On success you get the repository listing and the file contents: drwxr-xr-x - . drwxr-xr-x - .. -rw-r--r-- ? README Hello World ls -l prints ? for the size of a blob that has not been fetched yet; the size appears after the file has been read once. explorerepo --repo SPEC --rev REV options -c 'SCRIPT' explorerepo --repo SPEC --rev REV options CMD ARGS... single builtin, no shell parsing explorerepo --repo SPEC --rev REV options < script.sh explorerepo help CMD | flags | repos | agents | about explorerepo --help TOPIC same as help , brief without a topic explorerepo --version options: --rev alias --hash --refresh --no-cache --no-mux --https --no-https --check --max-output BYTES 200K --max-fetch BYTES 256M --max-files N 20000 --timeout DUR 60s --color auto|always|never auto env: EXPLOREREPO REPO default --repo EXPLOREREPO CACHE EXPLOREREPO DEBUG=1 EXPLOREREPO QUIET NO COLOR At a terminal, output is colored; pipes, redirects and known agent harnesses get plain text. --color , NO COLOR , FORCE COLOR and CLICOLOR FORCE override that explorerepo help flags has the details . SPEC accepts owner/repo GitHub , github.com/owner/repo , gitlab.com/group/sub/repo , a gist gist:<id , gist.github.com/<id , or a pasted https://gist.github.com/<user /<id URL , https://host/owner/repo , git@host:path.git , ssh://user@host :port /path , file:///abs/path , or a local path. Tested hosts: GitHub and gists, GitLab, Bitbucket, Codeberg/Forgejo/Gitea, and googlesource.com; any server speaking Git protocol v2 with filtered fetch works. Servers without filter support git.sr.ht, git.kernel.org, savannah are refused with an error. explorerepo help repos prints all of this. To test another host, run explorerepo --repo SPEC --check : it tries ssh and HTTPS separately, without the cache or the fallback, and reports each step connect with protocol v2 and filter support, refs, commit, one tree, a subtree in one request, a blob and a verdict. It exits 0 when at least one transport works and 128 otherwise. --https or --no-https limits it to one transport. --rev accepts a branch, tag annotated tags are peeled , a refs/... name, or a full 40-hex OID; a tag wins over a branch with the same name, as in git. Abbreviated OIDs are rejected. The byte flags accept K , M , and G suffixes. Gists are ordinary git repositories, so everything below works on them unchanged. They live on the separate host gist.github.com , so a Host github.com block in ~/.ssh/config keys, identity files does not apply. Add a matching Host gist.github.com stanza if you rely on one. A public gist is also readable over the anonymous HTTPS fallback; a secret gist needs an SSH key or a token that has access. There is no config file. --repo or EXPLOREREPO REPO is the only required setting; everything else has the default shown above. SSH is tried first. If a session cannot be established no key, port 22 blocked, ssh not installed , explorerepo retries the same host over anonymous HTTPS Git smart HTTP v2, still no GitHub API . The object cache is shared between the two, so nothing is re-fetched once a key is set up. Anonymous HTTPS reads public repositories only; private ones need ssh. When the fallback is used, a hint is printed to stderr at most once per day recorded in the cache dir ; suppress it with EXPLOREREPO QUIET , or skip the fallback entirely with --no-https . --https forces HTTPS. --no-cache also suppresses the note, since there is nowhere to record the timestamp. The exit status is the script's. Setup errors auth, repository not found, bad revision print explorerepo: ... and exit 128. A missing --repo exits 2 usage error . An unknown command exits 127, a timeout exits 124, and an internal error exits 70. Output beyond --max-output is cut off with a notice on stderr; truncation is not an error. pull -f PATH DEST is the only command that writes to the real disk. It copies a file or directory to DEST default ./<basename of PATH , refusing to overwrite without -f and refusing .git entries and symlink escapes. Use it when you want real tools rg , cargo , ... on a subtree. Fetched objects and refs are cached under $EXPLOREREPO CACHE , or os.UserCacheDir /explorerepo when that is unset on macOS, ~/Library/Caches/explorerepo . Objects are stored as git loose objects, so you can read them with GIT OBJECT DIRECTORY=<cache /objects git cat-file -p <oid . Refs are cached for 10 minutes so an agent sees a consistent snapshot across calls; --refresh bypasses the ref cache, and --no-cache keeps everything in memory. To reset, delete that directory. The only other thing written is the ssh control socket under $TMPDIR/explorerepo-<uid / , which goes away when the master idles out. make test offline: builds throwaway repos with the git CLI, uses the local transport make race make live EXPLOREREPO LIVE=1: octocat/Hello-World and golang/go over ssh scripts/probe.sh ssh octocat/Hello-World.git SHA-256 repositories; protocol v0 servers; authenticated HTTP the anonymous HTTPS fallback reads public repositories only ; Git LFS content pointer files are shown as-is ; refs/replace/ replacements git applies them locally, but the server sends the real objects ; path-limited log ; a background daemon; FUSE/NFS mounts; writing or pushing anything; process substitution, background jobs, and real program execution inside the shell.