Girder – an MCP server that gives coding agents a code graph

Girder, an open-source MCP server from developer dhishwasher, gives coding agents a semantic code graph instead of whole files, cutting context bytes by 97.85% (8,765 vs 408,137 bytes) on a committed ten-node measurement. The single static Rust binary supports Rust, Python, TypeScript, and Go, offers a permanent free tier with paid tools for impact analysis and test selection, and serves seven read-only tools over the Model Context Protocol.

Girder gives coding agents exactly the code they need, instead of whole files. It parses your repository into a living semantic graph — functions, definitions, call edges — and answers questions against that graph: exact function source, callers and callees, impact analysis, minimal test selection, and verified graph-addressed edits. It is one static Rust binary that any agent can drive over MCP, plus an optional native IDE. curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dhishwasher/Girder/main/install.sh | sh Languages: Rust, Python, TypeScript, and Go. Rust and Python are the most mature; TypeScript and Go are measured and gated, with their limits written down TypeScript /dhishwasher/Girder/blob/main/docs/typescript-support.md , Go /dhishwasher/Girder/blob/main/docs/go-support.md . Tiers: the free tier is permanent and needs no account — get source , find definition , search code , ask codebase , and review changes on a single repository. The orient and impacted tests tools need a paid license license . Keys are verified offline; the binary never phones home. On this repository's committed ten-node measurement, girder context --source-only returned 8,765 bytes where full-file reads returned 408,137 — a 97.85% reduction /dhishwasher/Girder/blob/main/docs/context-vs-read-cost-observation.json . That counts bytes, not tokens. A prebuilt binary, no Rust toolchain needed: curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/dhishwasher/Girder/main/install.sh | sh girder --version Or from source: cargo install --path crates/aether-app girder --help This builds the default headless profile and installs the girder binary to ~/.cargo/bin make sure it's on your PATH . No GPU, display, network, or API key is required — the default AI provider is an offline MockProvider . The GUI and live AI providers are opt-in Cargo features not included in a plain install; see The GUI the-gui and Local-first AI local-first-ai below. Each Windows release also includes Girder-<version -setup.exe . It installs for the current user under %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\Girder , adds Girder to the user PATH , creates a Start Menu shortcut, and does not request administrator access. Open a new terminal after installation so it sees the updated PATH . The installer includes the desktop GUI, and its Start Menu shortcut opens it. The archives and npm installation continue to provide the headless CLI. The installer is not code-signed yet , so Windows SmartScreen will warn on first run. After downloading the installer from the GitHub release, double-click it, choose More info on the “Windows protected your PC” dialog, verify that the app is Girder and the publisher is shown as unknown, then choose Run anyway . If those details do not match, cancel instead. Exact-symbol lookup is Girder's strongest search path. Natural-language intent search is experimental: it reached 41.9% top-1 and 77.4% top-5 accuracy on the committed 31-item corpus, below the precommitted 75% and 90% thresholds. See the observation /dhishwasher/Girder/blob/main/docs/description-search-accuracy-observation.json and policy /dhishwasher/Girder/blob/main/docs/description-search-accuracy-policy.json . girder mcp serves the read-only graph commands over the Model Context Protocol https://modelcontextprotocol.io , so an agent can ask about your codebase instead of reading files into its context window. Claude Code: claude mcp add girder -- npx -y girder-mcp . Any MCP client config: { "mcpServers": { "girder": { "command": "npx", "args": "-y", "girder-mcp", "." } } } With a binary already installed, "command": "girder", "args": "mcp", "." skips npm entirely. Seven tools, all read-only: | Tool | What it answers | |---|---| | get source | The source of specific functions, without the file around them. | | find definition | Where an exact identifier is declared. Not a substring search. | | search code | Which functions match a description, when you don't know the name. | | ask codebase | Callers, callees, and blast radius, by graph traversal. | | impacted tests | Only the tests that can reach what changed. | | review changes | What changed in the working tree, as semantics rather than text. | | orient | Source, callers, callees, tests, and impact for one node, in one call. | Two precommitted measurements, both counting bytes of command output rather than tokens no tokenizer was run : - get source against reading the whole file: 97.85% fewer bytes across ten functions sampled by source-size decile, cheaper on all ten docs/context-vs-read-cost.md /dhishwasher/Girder/blob/main/docs/context-vs-read-cost.md . - find definition against grep : 97.98% fewer bytes across ten identifiers docs/names-cost.md /dhishwasher/Girder/blob/main/docs/names-cost.md . Both are single-repository measurements. The direction is structural — files are much larger than the functions in them, and grep returns every mention where find definition returns only declarations — but the exact percentages are not portable. impacted tests is advisory . It over-selects unrelated tests, and it misses tests reached only through dynamic dispatch measured: recall 0.000 on a polymorphic-dispatch case, docs/core-representative-mutations.md /dhishwasher/Girder/blob/main/docs/core-representative-mutations.md . A full test run remains the authority before calling a change safe. orient bundles what get source + ask codebase callers, callees, and impact + impacted tests otherwise answer across 5-6 separate calls into one. On a 15-task corpus spanning ten pinned repositories, that one call used fewer aggregate bytes than the chain it replaces 48,814 vs 101,302, a 0.48 ratio while cutting 78 round trips to 15 — one per task — and, after two disclosed defects were fixed, 37 of 37 gated checks pass . The first run found impacted tests --quiet silently dropping non-Rust/Python test names orient 's own test-coverage section did not share the bug, which is how it was found ; that filter is now removed. Its natural-language intent input still inherits search code 's accuracy — all three intent tasks in this corpus resolved to the wrong node, unchanged and out of scope for this fix — but orient 's confidence heuristic, which originally caught none of the three, now flags all three "confidence": "low" with candidate scores attached, at the cost of also flagging some correct resolutions when a runner-up is close. See docs/orient-tool.md /dhishwasher/Girder/blob/main/docs/orient-tool.md and the committed policy /dhishwasher/Girder/blob/main/docs/orient-tool-policy.json / original observation /dhishwasher/Girder/blob/main/docs/orient-tool-observation.json / post-fix observation /dhishwasher/Girder/blob/main/docs/orient-tool-observation-post-fix.json . The project root is fixed when the server starts, so no tool call can reach another directory. GIRDER MCP TIMEOUT SECONDS default 120 bounds each call; raise it for a very large repository. Everything below assumes girder is on your PATH . Building from a source checkout without installing works the same way with cargo run -p aether-app -- in place of girder . Full end-to-end demo — no GPU, display, or API key required: girder Run the test suite graph, builder, AI router, agent swarm, debugger : cargo test --workspace Optional: compile live providers and run the real debugpy adapter test: cargo check -p aether-ai --features live-providers python3 -m pip install debugpy cargo test -p aether-dap --test debugpy -- --ignored Girder is also a CLI that operates on actual directories: Build the semantic graph from a project and save it as <dir /project.aether: girder analyze sample-project Inspect a saved graph and a node's impact set: girder inspect sample-project/project.aether crate::lib::add Concept search: rank functions by relevance to a natural-language query: girder search sample-project "sum numbers in a list" Graph-semantic rename — follows Calls edges not text search and rewrites only the real callers, then saves the updated graph: girder refactor sample-project rename crate::lib::add plus Preview what the swarm would build — graph-aware Planner only, no code written: girder swarm-plan sample-project "add user authentication" Dispatch the agent swarm on a project with a natural-language intent: girder forge sample-project "add a subtract function" Author a single graph-addressed plan step via a wired-in model the offline MockProvider by default and execute it through the same verified plan executor as plan run below, repairing from check failures automatically. Never point this — or plan run --authored — at sample-project/: it is a pinned measurement fixture, not a demo target, and both refuse it outright see "Demo target" below : girder do demo-project "add an exclamation mark to the farewell" Emit graph context, a real Plan Format v2 authoring schema, and a plan skeleton as one JSON object — for pasting into any external chat model that isn't wired in as a provider. See "External authoring" below for the full loop from here to a verified, applied edit: girder context demo-project --nodes crate::greeter::farewell "add an exclamation mark to the farewell" --json Validate/inspect/execute a plan file directly. --authored is for a plan an external model wrote by hand see "External authoring" below ; without it, run executes a plan exactly as authored used internally by do : girder plan validate my-plan.json girder plan explain my-plan.json girder plan run my-plan.json --dry Semantic code review vs HEAD typed mutations, not text diffs : girder review sample-project --since HEAD~1 Minimal test selection: find every test reachable from changed functions: girder test-impact sample-project --run Knowledge-graph query — answer a question by traversing the semantic graph: girder query sample-project "what would break if I change add?" girder query sample-project "what calls sum list?" girder query sample-project interactive REPL reads stdin Start a graph-native collaboration history, give another replica its own actor, record that replica's current source graph, and deterministically merge it: girder collab init sample-project alice alice.aetherc girder collab fork alice.aetherc bob bob.aetherc --approve girder collab sync sample-project bob.aetherc girder collab merge alice.aetherc bob.aetherc merged.aethercb girder collab materialize merged.aethercb merged.aether Membership changes are causal operations and require explicit approval: girder collab member add alice.aetherc carol --approve girder collab member remove alice.aetherc carol --approve Or exchange deltas in a mutually authenticated live loopback session. Secret contents are generated with private permissions and never printed. Group-secret-only operation remains available as a migration mode: girder collab secret collaboration.secret Strict identity mode additionally pins each roster actor to an Ed25519 key. Generate each actor's private/shareable-public pair, compare the printed SHA-256 fingerprints out of band, and approve the exact peer fingerprint: girder collab identity generate alice.aetherc \ alice.identity alice.identity.pub girder collab identity generate bob.aetherc \ bob.identity bob.identity.pub girder collab identity show bob.identity.pub girder collab identity trust alice.trust \ bob.identity.pub --approve <bob-fingerprint girder collab identity trust bob.trust \ alice.identity.pub --approve <alice-fingerprint Sign existing local-authored history now strict host/join also does this in memory before exchange , then audit a fully attested bundle offline: girder collab identity attest alice.aetherc alice.identity girder collab identity attest bob.aetherc bob.identity girder collab host alice.aetherc 127.0.0.1:7331 \ --identity-file alice.identity --trust-store alice.trust \ --secret-file collaboration.secret --discovery-dir .bitcode/peers \ --presence "reviewing parser changes" girder collab discover bob.aetherc .bitcode/peers \ --secret-file collaboration.secret girder collab join-peer bob.aetherc alice .bitcode/peers \ --identity-file bob.identity --trust-store bob.trust \ --secret-file collaboration.secret --presence "running transport tests" An explicit address remains available when local discovery is not in use: girder collab join bob.aetherc 127.0.0.1:7331 \ --secret-file collaboration.secret \ --identity-file bob.identity --trust-store bob.trust Verify every retained non-bootstrap operation against the current local pins: girder collab identity verify \ alice.aetherc alice.identity alice.trust To rotate your own key, first generate a new pair, then record a dual-signed causal transition while both private keys are available. Peers can then rotate their current pin before the next strict session: girder collab identity generate alice.aetherc \ alice-new.identity alice-new.identity.pub girder collab identity rotate-local alice.aetherc \ alice.identity alice-new.identity \ --from <old-alice-fingerprint --approve <new-alice-fingerprint Peer trust rotation/removal also requires the exact reviewed fingerprints: girder collab identity rotate alice.trust \ bob-new.identity.pub --from <old-bob-fingerprint --approve <new-bob-fingerprint girder collab identity remove alice.trust bob \ --approve <new-bob-fingerprint Successful sessions persist both peers' causal acknowledgements. Once every active member has acknowledged superseded history, prune it conservatively: girder collab compact alice.aetherc Rebuild remote whole-file projections, show semantic/file changes and conflicts, then explicitly validate and journal-commit the reviewed bytes: girder collab review sample-project alice.aetherc girder collab apply sample-project alice.aetherc --approve Real Python execution tracer — records every variable at every line/call/return: girder debug script.py girder debug script.py --what-if x=10 at 2 DAP adapter dry-run: resolve graph breakpoints without launching an adapter: girder dap script.py --dry-run Generate and review an extension recipe without changing the project: girder extension sample-project generate "show call impact" Grant the exact recipe digest/capabilities, then manage its lifecycle: girder extension sample-project generate "show call impact" --approve girder extension sample-project list girder extension sample-project disable dev.bitcode.generated.show-call-impact girder extension sample-project remove dev.bitcode.generated.show-call-impact Install a hand-authored declarative recipe after the same explicit review: girder extension sample-project install recipe.json --approve Browse the built-in reviewed marketplace and inspect a listing: girder extension sample-project marketplace search impact girder extension sample-project marketplace show org.bitcode.impact-navigator Regenerate a reviewed intent for this project, preview its capability delta, then explicitly approve the adapted recipe: girder extension sample-project marketplace adapt org.bitcode.impact-navigator girder extension sample-project marketplace adapt org.bitcode.impact-navigator --approve Portable catalogs use the same bounded parser and print a catalog fingerprint: girder extension sample-project marketplace list \ --catalog marketplace/girder-extensions.json Full help: girder --help analyze / forge walk every .rs , .py , .ts , .tsx , .mts , .cts , and .go file skipping target , .git , … , build the graph with directory-aware module paths, resolve free and receiver-qualified method calls across files, and persist the .aether graph. Supported languages are Rust, Python, TypeScript, and Go. The TypeScript and Go graph surfaces are measured and gated, but remain less mature than Rust and Python: TypeScript meets its precision and recall gates, while Go currently records one false negative micro-recall 0.954545 against a 1.0 gate . See the honest support boundaries and results for TypeScript /dhishwasher/Girder/blob/main/docs/typescript-support.md and Go /dhishwasher/Girder/blob/main/docs/go-support.md , with the committed observations for TypeScript /dhishwasher/Girder/blob/main/docs/typescript-support-observation.json and Go /dhishwasher/Girder/blob/main/docs/go-support-observation.json . Rust module-scope imports retain renamed symbol identity across bounded public re-export chains, including crate-root and mod.rs facades, so collisions are resolved by exact path while ambiguous or cyclic aliases stay unlinked. Rust parameter annotations and direct type-qualified local constructors provide bounded receiver types, including inside macro token trees. Function signatures also supply parser-owned return types for local factory bindings through ? , unwrap / expect , and result-preserving error adapters. Instance factories returning Self resolve to their owning type, while single-argument generic wrappers propagate an inner receiver only when their signatures prove the same direct type parameter flows through. Recursive factory hints have a hard size budget. Unknown receiver types remain unresolved rather than being linked to an unrelated same-named method. forge plans every candidate byte, checks conflict baselines, validates the candidate in a copied workspace, runs Cargo build/tests when a manifest is present plus configured validation commands, and only then journal-commits the source projection and graph together. collab exchanges semantic graph operations rather than text ranges. Each human or agent replica has a validated actor id and causal version vector; minimal idempotent deltas converge regardless of delivery order. Concurrent deletes win, concurrent updates have a deterministic tie-break, and deleting then recreating a node cannot resurrect edges from its old generation. RON .aetherc bundles are reviewable; .aethercb bundles use compact bincode. Init/sync reconciles source with the durable graph so graph-owned agent and extension metadata participates instead of being discarded. Bundle saves use a synced atomic replacement. Membership is part of the causal operation history rather than a local address book. An approved collab fork registers the invited actor in both the source and forked bundles; if writing the fork fails, the source roster is rolled back. collab member add|remove ... --approve records convergent add/remove operations, concurrent removal wins, normal replica APIs reject new operations after the local actor is removed, and membership changes invalidate stale acknowledgements. A history has one genesis self-membership root: separately initialized actors cannot self-invite through a relayed delta. Removal records the highest counter observed for that actor; unseen later counters fail until their context observes a causal re-add, so a removed offline actor cannot keep extending a stale membership epoch. Version 1 and 2 bundles migrate conservatively by retaining the local actor, previously acknowledged peers, and non-bootstrap actors already present in the causal clock. Use fork to allocate a new actor replica; direct member add is for re-authorizing an already allocated unique actor, since it does not create that actor's bundle. Version 1-3 bundles load as explicit unsigned legacy history; version 4 stores operation attestations without changing existing CRDT dots. Live host/join uses fresh random challenges, mutual HMAC-SHA256 group authentication, direction- and sequence-bound message integrity, bounded frames checked before allocation, and socket timeouts. Secrets are read from non-symlink regular files owned by the current user with private permissions. Optional identity mode adds transcript-bound Ed25519 proofs and a local actor-to-key trust store: both endpoints must configure it, each public key must match the peer actor's exact pinned fingerprint, and either attempted downgrade to group-secret-only mode is refused. The signed transcript also authenticates fresh X25519 keys, deriving a session-integrity key that another group-secret holder cannot calculate from captured traffic. Private identity files receive the same ownership, symlink, and permission checks. New trust, rotation, and removal are explicit fingerprint-approved operations, and identity files are actor-bound to their collaboration bundle. Strict identity sessions also give every retained non-bootstrap CRDT operation a durable Ed25519 attestation. A delta importing a new operation, or a new retroactive attestation for an already-known dot, triggers verification of that actor's complete retained history before any bundle is replaced. The signature binds the dot, causal context, and exact action, so action tampering, actor forgery, unsigned relay, conflicting proofs, and replayed dot changes fail atomically. Local legacy operations can be upgraded with identity attest ; identity verify audits a whole bundle against the local private identity and peer trust store. Key rotation is a causal operation signed by the previous key with a second proof from the successor key. Verification walks this chain backward from the currently pinned fingerprint, so a retired key remains valid for its historical counters but cannot authorize later ones. Rotation operations are never removed by compaction. Deterministic bootstrap snapshot operations remain an explicitly pre-shared bundle baseline rather than pretending to have a human signature; strict deltas cannot introduce new bootstrap history. Group-secret-only live sessions and the unpinned collab merge workflow ignore incoming attestation metadata, preventing an unauthenticated path from poisoning later strict verification. Actor-key transparency beyond exact local pins is still a separate layer. The transport deliberately binds loopback only: graph payloads are authenticated but not encrypted, so remote peers must connect through an encrypted tunnel such as SSH. After both sides verify that the other actor is active in the roster and durably persist a converged version, they persist monotonic peer acknowledgements. A delta that would remove either authenticated endpoint is rejected before persistence. A session claiming an unlisted actor is rejected even with a valid group-secret proof. Host and join may explicitly share a single-line status of at most 256 UTF-8 bytes. Both statuses and optional public keys are bound into the authenticated handshake. Status is reported to the peer and discarded after that synchronization; it is never written to graph operations, acknowledgements, discovery tickets, or collaboration bundles. An optional --discovery-dir publishes an atomic, HMAC-authenticated, process-bound lease for the loopback host. The current-user directory and tickets must be private new paths are mode 700 and 600 on Unix , symlinks are rejected, each scan is capped at 256 entries, dead process ids on Unix and actors outside the local bundle's active remote roster are ignored, and join-peer refuses ambiguous same-actor tickets. A normal host shutdown removes its unchanged ticket. Tickets are only endpoint hints: PID reuse or a stale ticket cannot authorize a session because the existing roster-bound mutual-authentication handshake still decides every join. collab compact requires an acknowledgement from every active remote member, then prunes only causally superseded operations while retaining concurrent winners, membership removal barriers, and node-generation tombstones. Peers older than the recorded history floor fail safely and need a current bundle. Network/continuous discovery, continuous presence/subscriptions, encrypted remote transport, and operation-level signatures/key transparency remain future work. Group-secret-only migration mode remains a group credential: roster checks reject an unlisted claimed actor, but any secret holder can impersonate an active actor. Pinned identity mode prevents that endpoint impersonation after fingerprints have been verified. It does not retroactively prove the author of every historical CRDT operation: authenticated peers can relay the existing multi-actor operation set, so provenance of stored history remains trusted at the collaboration-group boundary until operations themselves are signed. Every parsed module carries a bounded file-v1 whole-file projection in the semantic graph. collab review compares the remote and freshly reconciled local graphs, lists file and semantic changes, and reparses every remote file to prove its nodes and projection-derived edges agree with the claimed graph. Missing modules, path escapes, oversized files, inconsistent concurrent winners, and stale local baselines are conflicts. collab apply --approve reruns the plan, executes configured validation in an isolated candidate, then journal-commits added/modified/deleted files and the reconciled graph together. Native approval is SHA-256-bound to every candidate and expected baseline byte, so any project or bundle change forces another review. Girder works without configuration. To materialize and inspect the validated defaults for a project: girder config sample-project --init girder config sample-project girder.toml controls source roots and ignore globs, symlink policy, graph storage, structured impacted-test commands, the agent output module/file, and candidate-validation commands, timeouts, diagnostic limits, and copy budgets. Commands are argv arrays rather than interpolated shell strings. On Linux, available bubblewrap support mounts the host filesystem read-only while the candidate and approved build caches remain writable; other platforms still run inside the disposable candidate copy. Invalid keys, escaping paths, broken globs, unsupported graph extensions, malformed commands, and unsupported config versions fail before project analysis starts. girder do drives a wired-in provider OpenAI, Anthropic, Ollama, or the offline MockProvider automatically. girder context and plan run --authored split that same workflow at the model boundary, so any chat model — one with no API integration in this codebase at all — can author a verified graph edit. Reading, not authoring? Add --source-only . The default output below carries a Plan Format v2 schema and plan skeleton, which is a fixed ~6 KB that a model authoring an edit needs and a model merely reading code does not — it measured more expensive than reading the whole file on 2 of 10 nodes, and 15.6× the file for a small one. --source-only drops the envelope and measured 97.85% cheaper than a file read across the same ten nodes docs/context-vs-read-cost.md /dhishwasher/Girder/blob/main/docs/context-vs-read-cost.md . It also needs no git repository, having no base commit to pin. The authoring loop: 1. Emit graph context, a real Plan Format v2 authoring schema, and a plan skeleton base commit, on failure, the mandatory tests.impacted check as one JSON object: girder context demo-project --nodes crate::greeter::farewell \ "add an exclamation mark to the farewell" --json context.json 2. Paste context.json into any chat model. Ask it to fill in the plan skeleton's step id, description, edits so the step satisfies the schema exactly, and save its response as plan.json — the schema is the literal Plan Format v2 the executor loads, not an approximation of it, so a model that follows it produces a file that loads without translation. 3. Run and verify it. plan run has no project-directory argument — the root is always the current directory, so run this from inside demo-project/. --authored applies the same harness guarantees do applies internally to a model-authored plan: on failure is forced to rollback plan, a tests.impacted check is injected if the plan doesn't already carry one, and a zero-step plan is refused outright rather than passing vacuously. --authored-by <name records who authored it in the written report: cd demo-project && girder plan run ../plan.json --authored --authored-by claude-opus-5 A passing run applies the edit to the real tree and writes a report under .girder/reports/ ; a failing check rolls the tree back to base commit automatically, so a bad edit from an untrusted external model never lands half-applied. plan schema 's exact shape a oneOf discriminated union per edit/check kind, matching planfile::schema 's deserializer field for field is what makes step 2 reliable — see gap 17 in docs/core-gap-analysis.md /dhishwasher/Girder/blob/main/docs/core-gap-analysis.md for the defect this closed and the round-trip test that proves it. girder do and plan run --authored both refuse sample-project/ as a target outright, with an error naming demo-project/ as the place to run instead: bash $ girder do sample-project "uppercase greet's return value" error: sample-project/ is a pinned measurement fixture see gap 18/21 in docs/core-gap-analysis.md and refuses authored writes; run demos against demo-project/ instead sample-project/ is a pinned baseline tools/authoring task check.py and tools/plan executor oracle.py read against a specific clean source commit for the graph-addressed-authoring-cost measurement corpus, not a scratch target. A real non-dry authored write there mutates the same file the measurement harness depends on — this happened twice, three days apart, and cost a full day of debugging a broken referee before the fixture drift was found; see gap 18 in docs/core-gap-analysis.md . demo-project/ exists so that never has to happen again: a small, disposable Python project nothing under tools/ or docs/ reads, safe for real non-dry authored writes. Read-only commands context , search , analyze , test-impact still work against sample-project/ — only the two commands that write are refused. girder no args walks the entire pipeline over stdout: 1. Builds a semantic graph from source with tree-sitter the graph is the source of truth; text is a projection . 2. Dispatches the agent swarm on a natural-language intent "Add a multiply function to the math module" . The graph-aware Planner reads existing nodes before planning; the Coder generates each function, wires Calls edges, and emits a FeatureComplete summary; Tester, Documenter, Refactorer, SecurityAuditor, and Optimizer annotate in parallel. 3. Runs predictive impact analysis over the graph. 4. Time-travels a deliberate bug : records an execution trace via sys.settrace , branches a what-if alternative variable overridden at a specific step via CPython's PyFrame LocalsToFast , shows exactly where the two timelines diverge. | Crate | Role | |---|---| | aether-graph | The living semantic graph: nodes/edges, impact analysis, .aether serialization, and convergent collaboration replicas. Source of truth. | | aether-builder | tree-sitter → graph mapping, incremental edit sync, syntax-highlight spans. | | aether-ai | AiProvider trait, offline MockProvider , OpenAI/Anthropic live providers, multi-provider Router , provider extension points. | | aether-agents | The parallel swarm: message bus, orchestrator, 8 specialized agents. | | aether-debugger | Recording interpreter, execution trace, branching timeline, what-if + AI root-cause. | | aether-dap | Debug Adapter Protocol client/session layer with graph-aware breakpoint support. | | aether-extensions | Strict declarative recipes, digest-bound grants, graph-native lifecycle, bounded UI and project contributions. | | aether-app | The girder binary: every CLI subcommand, plus the egui/wgpu GUI behind feature gui . | cargo run -p aether-app --features gui -- --gui sample-project The native workspace opens a configured project, indexes its Rust, Python, and TypeScript source, provides file navigation and language-aware editing, folds edits into the graph, and reconciles those fresh projections with the durable graph. Agent summaries, graph-owned nodes, and inferred relationships survive reopen and editor refresh while source-derived structure follows the files on disk. The semantic graph is an interactive navigation surface rather than a static diagram. Its retained force layout keeps positions stable while the graph changes; pan/zoom, fit-to-view, text search, node/edge type filters, one- and two-hop focus, viewport culling, and zoom-dependent labels keep large graphs legible. At overview scale, implementation nodes and their relationships collapse into weighted module-level connections; zooming in restores exact types, functions, and enabled relationships. The overview ranks and bounds module connections so the strongest architectural signals remain readable. Selecting a node exposes its source location and agent metadata, and double-clicking or choosing Open source moves the editor cursor to its span. Editor saves use a recoverable journaled transaction for the source projection and semantic graph. Dirty buffers guard project/file switches, saves detect external source or graph changes, and startup rolls back an interrupted multi-file commit before indexing. GUI agent runs mutate a checkpointed graph and remain visibly pending while validation runs off the render thread. Commit stays disabled until the exact graph snapshot passes candidate build/tests; diagnostics remain inspectable and failed candidates can be revalidated or rolled back. Commit projects generated functions to the configured output file and persists the graph, while Roll back cancels validation and restores the pre-run graph without touching source files. The right workspace has separate Agents , Extensions , Collaboration , and Author views. Extensions contains Generate, Marketplace, and Installed tabs. Extension generation returns a strict JSON recipe; installation stays disabled until the user reviews its exact SHA-256 digest, capabilities, contributions, projections, and full JSON. The marketplace searches bounded declarative catalogs, displays the catalog and listing/reference-recipe fingerprints plus reviews bound to both, and regenerates a listing intent against a bounded sample of the current semantic graph. Adapted recipes preserve the listing ID and show every added/removed capability scope. A catalog review never grants installation authority: the adapted recipe still requires a fresh approval bound to its own exact digest. Reviewer identities are catalog metadata rather than cryptographic signatures; verify an external catalog's printed SHA-256 fingerprint through the channel that distributed it. The Collaboration view initializes, inspects, and synchronizes the full workspace graph, generates private secrets, verifies bounded local discovery tickets, and lets the user select an authenticated active-roster endpoint before joining on a background thread so rendering never blocks. It shows causal version/operation counts and the deterministic conflict policy, durable acknowledgements, and compacted history floor; it can conservatively compact acknowledged history. A live join updates the collaboration bundle only. Optional identity controls generate an actor-bound key, display a peer's exact fingerprint for out-of-band review, pin the unchanged public file, list trusted actors, and make strict identity mode visibly distinct from legacy group-secret mode. Explicit rotation/removal remains available in the CLI. Separate Review and Apply controls keep remote graph-to-source projection explicit, consistency-checked, digest-bound, validated, and atomic. CLI host is the persistent serving surface. The Author view exposes both authoring paths from "External authoring" above without a terminal: type an intent, click Search to run the same concept search girder do / context use only the top-scored hit starts checked — narrower than the CLI default on purpose, since gap 15 in docs/core-gap-analysis.md exists to shrink what a model can touch , and adjust the checkboxes to pin the exact nodes a plan may edit — the same --nodes a terminal invocation would otherwise require typing full paths for. Local model mode mirrors girder do : Run streams each provider attempt into a live log and shows pass/fail plus the report. External model mode mirrors girder context + plan run --authored : Copy context JSON puts exactly what the CLI command would print onto the clipboard, paste a model's plan response back in, and Run authored applies the same guarantees forced rollback plan , the mandatory tests.impacted check, zero-step refusal . A non-dry Run in either mode requires a second, explicit confirming click — a GUI button that silently writes to the tree has no command line to review first. Open demo-project/ to try the full loop for real: cargo run -p aether-app --features gui -- --gui demo-project Then, in the Author tab: type "add an exclamation mark to the farewell", click Search, leave crate::greeter::farewell checked, and either click Run Local model or use Copy Context JSON / paste a plan back in / Run authored External model — Dry run stays checked by default in both, so nothing writes to the tree until it's unchecked and confirmed. Like girder do against a terminal, both refuse sample-project/ outright; only demo-project/ or another project you point it at accepts a real, non-dry Run. Installed records and their contribution nodes live in the semantic graph and survive source reconciliation. Enable/disable affects only contribution visibility. Removal conflict-checks every installed projection, restores replaced files, deletes files created by the extension, and commits the project plus graph as one recoverable transaction. Model output is never loaded as native code. Contributed validation commands resolve back to an installed, enabled recipe and require Bubblewrap; they run with networking disabled and a cleared environment in the disposable candidate workspace. CI type-checks the gui feature on the stable Rust toolchain. Rendering needs a GPU — or a software Vulkan adapter Mesa lavapipe plus the usual X11 libs e.g. libxkbcommon-x11 . If no surface can be created the binary logs the wgpu error and falls back to the headless demo automatically, so it never hard-fails. It has been verified headlessly under Xvfb + lavapipe: The default headless build, all tests, and girder 's demo require none of this — no GPU, display, or extra system libraries. The default provider is a deterministic, offline MockProvider , so everything runs with no network and no API key. OpenAI and Anthropic are implemented live providers behind the live-providers feature. OpenAI uses the Responses API and is selected when OPENAI API KEY is set: export OPENAI API KEY=sk-... export OPENAI MODEL=gpt-5.6 optional; this is the default cargo run -p aether-app --features live-providers -- forge sample-project "add a divide function" Anthropic remains available as a second live provider: export ANTHROPIC API KEY=sk-ant-... cargo run -p aether-app --features live-providers -- forge sample-project "add a divide function" The Router tries OpenAI first when configured, uses Anthropic as a secondary live provider for planning/codegen, and falls back to the mock otherwise. Gemini, xAI Grok, and local Ollama remain compile-clean extension-point structs; they deliberately do not enter routing until their HTTP bodies are implemented. A focused, honest prototype: the three pillars graph-as-truth, agent swarm, time-travel debug are real, tested, and runnable. The checked Core Trustworthiness Measurement /dhishwasher/Girder/blob/main/docs/core-trustworthiness-measurement.md compares affected-test selection with isolated runtime execution. Its bounded baseline measures both Rust and Python precision/recall at 1.000/1.000 the earlier 0.667 Rust precision defect is closed . That is a result on small fixtures, not a representative-repository superiority claim — and the counter-evidence is checked in alongside it: on a real dependency, a polymorphic-dispatch mutation measured recall 0.000 docs/core-representative-mutations.md /dhishwasher/Girder/blob/main/docs/core-representative-mutations.md , which is why test selection is documented as advisory rather than authoritative. Implemented features: | Feature | What it does | |---|---| | Semantic graph | Nodes/edges, Rust alias/return/scoped-pattern/Cargo-entrypoint-aware and Python alias/nullable-annotation/constructor-aware cross-file call resolution, literal-aware macro calls, impact BFS, similarity edges, strict versioned .aether persistence and source reconciliation | | Graph explorer | Retained force layout, pan/zoom, search and typed filters, neighborhood focus, LOD/culling, metadata inspection, source navigation | | Agent swarm | Planner + Coder + Tester + Documenter + Refactorer + Optimizer + SecurityAuditor + QueryAgent | | Intent-first planning | Planner reads the graph before planning; generates ordered FeatureSpec with Calls-edge wiring | | Real Python tracer | sys.settrace execution recording, what-if branching via PyFrame LocalsToFast | | Knowledge-graph queries | Natural-language → concept / impact / callers / callees / explain / neighbourhood | | Semantic review | Typed diff added/modified/removed nodes + edges , impact radius, test gap report | | Minimal test selection | Call-graph reachability from changed functions, optional --run | | Graph collaboration | Deterministic operation-set CRDT, causal membership/deltas/tombstones, atomic RON/bincode bundles, roster-gated authenticated loopback host/join with optional downgrade-resistant pinned Ed25519 actor identities, private authenticated local discovery leases, all-member acknowledgement compaction, and reviewed whole-file source projection | | Project contract | Validated girder.toml for source scope, graph path, test runners, and agent output | | Source projection | GUI/CLI agent output and graph rename commit validated source plus graph through recoverable journaled transactions | | Candidate validation | Disposable project copy, optional bubblewrap isolation, Cargo build/tests, configured checks, cancellation/timeouts, bounded diagnostics, snapshot-bound commit gate | | DAP integration | Two-phase DAP launch, graph-node breakpoints, stop/stack inspection, and real debugpy coverage | | Declarative extensions | AI/JSON recipe generation, exact digest-bound approval, parameterized capabilities, graph-native records/contributions, GUI/CLI lifecycle, reversible validated projections | | Generative marketplace | Bounded portable catalogs, deterministic fingerprints/search, digest-bound reviews, project-aware regeneration, exact capability deltas, CLI and native browser | | External authoring | girder context emits graph context plus a real Plan Format v2 schema for any external chat model; plan run --authored re-enforces rollback/impacted-test guarantees on the result | Optional DAP adapter smoke test: python3 -m pip install debugpy cargo test -p aether-dap --test debugpy -- --ignored --nocapture The measured table-stakes comparison, current correctness evidence, and prioritized open risks are maintained in docs/core-gap-analysis.md /dhishwasher/Girder/blob/main/docs/core-gap-analysis.md . Girder is source-available , not open source, under the Business Source License 1.1 /dhishwasher/Girder/blob/main/LICENSE . The free tier is genuinely free and permanent: it has no expiry and requires no account. For a single repository it includes get source , find definition , search code , ask codebase , and review changes . The orient and impacted tests tools require a paid license. Licenses are signed keys verified locally by the Girder binary. The binary never phones home, makes no network call for licensing, and works fully offline in both tiers. On September 4, 2030, the license converts to the Apache License, Version 2.0. See LICENSE /dhishwasher/Girder/blob/main/LICENSE for the authoritative terms and CONTRIBUTING.md /dhishwasher/Girder/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md for contribution terms.