claude-local-docs

A local-first alternative to Context7 for Claude Code. Indexes your project's dependency documentation and source code locally with production-grade semantic search. Embeddings and reranking run via TEI (HuggingFace Text Embeddings Inference) Docker containers with auto GPU detection. Supports JS/TS, Vue, Svelte, and Astro with AST-aware chunking, JSDoc extraction, and git-diff incremental indexing.

Benchmark: Semantic Search vs Grep

Tested on a real-world TypeScript monorepo (957 files, 4,484 indexed code chunks) with 187 generic queries across 16 categories (authentication, database, caching, error handling, etc.).

How scores are computed:

• Semantic search — scored 0-10 based on the top relevance score returned by the search pipeline (top_relevance * 9.5 + result_count_bonus). Zero results = zero score.
• Grep — scored 0-10 using a log-scale penalty for noise (7.5 - 1.5 * log10(matching_files)). Few focused matches score high; hundreds of files score low. Capped at 7.5 since grep always requires manual review.
• Combined — max(Semantic, Grep) per query. Represents what Claude Code gets when both tools are available.

How the benchmark was run:

1. 200 queries were written to cover common code search patterns that apply to any codebase (e.g., "How does error handling work?", "Where are background jobs defined?").
2. 8 agents ran in parallel (25 queries each). Each query was run through search_code (this plugin's MCP tool) and rg (ripgrep, same as Claude Code's built-in Grep). The MCP tool returns a relevance score (0-1) and result count; grep returns a file count.
3. Scores were computed automatically from raw metrics — no manual judgment involved.

Requirements

Hardware (GPU required)

A supported GPU is mandatory for embedding and reranking inference. CPU-only mode is not supported.

The three TEI models require approximately:

• nomic-ai/nomic-embed-text-v1.5 — ~270 MB
• cross-encoder/ms-marco-MiniLM-L-6-v2 — ~90 MB
• Qodo/Qodo-Embed-1-1.5B — ~3 GB (FP16)

First run downloads all models (~3.4 GB total). Subsequent starts use cached models.

Software

Ports

TEI uses three local ports (not exposed to the network):

Installation

As a Claude Code plugin (recommended)

# Add the marketplace
/plugin marketplace add matteodante/claude-local-docs

# Install the plugin
/plugin install claude-local-docs

The plugin starts TEI containers automatically on session start via a SessionStart hook.

Manual / development setup

git clone https://github.com/matteodante/claude-local-docs.git
cd claude-local-docs
npm install
npm run build

# Start TEI (auto-detects GPU)
./start-tei.sh

Why not Context7?

How it works

Documentation search

/fetch-docs                        search_docs("how to use useState")
     |                                       |
     v                                       v
 Detect monorepo              +--- Vector search (LanceDB) ---+
 Scan all workspace pkgs      |    nomic-embed-text-v1.5       |
 Resolve catalog: versions    |                                |
     |                        |                                +-> RRF Fusion
     v                        |                                |    (k=60)
 For each runtime dep:        +-- BM25 search (LanceDB FTS) --+
   - Search for llms.txt      |    keyword + stemming            |
   - Raw fetch (no truncation)|                                  v
   - Chunk + embed + store    |                        Cross-encoder rerank
                              |                        ms-marco-MiniLM-L-6-v2
                              |                          (via TEI :39282)
                              +----------------------------------+
                                                  |
                                                  v
                                          Top-K results

Codebase search

/index-codebase                    search_code("RRF fusion logic")
     |                                       |
     v                                       v
 Walk project files            +--- Vector search (LanceDB) -------+
 Respect .gitignore            |    Qodo-Embed-1-1.5B (1536-dim)   |
 Git-diff incremental skip     |                                    |
     |                         |                                    +-> RRF Fusion
     v                         |                                    |    (k=60)
 For each JS/TS/Vue/           +-- BM25 search (LanceDB FTS) ------+
 Svelte/Astro file:            |    camelCase split + stemming      |
   - Extract <script> (SFC)    |                                    |
   - Parse AST (tree-sitter)   +-- File-path boost (optional) -----+
   - Extract functions/classes |                                      v
   - Extract JSDoc/decorators  |                            Cross-encoder rerank
   - Contextual headers        |                            ms-marco-MiniLM-L-6-v2
   - Embed with Qodo-Embed     |                              (via TEI :39282)
   - Store in LanceDB          +--------------------------------------+
                                                  |
                                                  v
                                      Function-level results
                                   (file, lines, scope, score)
                                   + neighbor chunk expansion

Usage

1. Index your project's docs

/fetch-docs

Claude analyzes your project (including monorepo workspaces), finds all runtime dependencies, searches the web for the best documentation for each one (preferring llms-full.txt > llms.txt > official docs), and indexes everything locally.

2. Index your source code

/index-codebase

Parses all JS/TS/Vue/Svelte/Astro files with tree-sitter, extracts JSDoc comments and decorators, generates Qodo-Embed-1-1.5B embeddings for function/class/method-level chunks, and stores them in LanceDB. Incremental via git-diff (falls back to SHA-256 hashing for non-git projects). Only changed files are re-indexed.

3. Search

Ask Claude anything. It will automatically use the right search tool:

# Library documentation (search_docs)
How do I set up middleware in Express?
What are the options for useQuery in TanStack Query?
Show me the API for zod's .refine()

# Your codebase (search_code)
Where is the authentication middleware?
Find the database connection setup
How does the search pipeline work?

4. Other tools

• list_docs — See what's indexed, when it was fetched, chunk counts
• get_doc_section — Retrieve specific sections by heading or chunk ID
• get_codebase_status — Check index status, language breakdown, changed files
• analyze_dependencies — List all deps (monorepo-aware, catalog-resolved, runtime/dev tagged)
• fetch_and_store_doc — Fetch a URL and index it directly (no AI truncation)
• discover_and_fetch_docs — Auto-discover and index docs for any npm package

TEI backend

ML inference runs in TEI (HuggingFace Text Embeddings Inference) containers:

All TEI communication goes through a shared TeiClient class (src/tei-client.ts) with automatic retry (2 attempts, exponential backoff), 30s timeout, and batch splitting. TEI containers must be running for both indexing and search — there is no fallback mode.

Starting TEI

./start-tei.sh           # Auto-detect GPU
./start-tei.sh --metal   # Force Apple Metal (native, no Docker)
./start-tei.sh --cpu     # Force CPU Docker
./start-tei.sh --stop    # Stop all TEI

Auto-detection selects the optimal backend:

GPU override for NVIDIA:

docker compose -f docker-compose.yml -f docker-compose.nvidia.yml up -d

Search pipeline

Doc search uses a 4-stage RAG pipeline. Code search adds a 5th file-path boost signal:

Code search specifics

• AST chunking: tree-sitter parses JS/TS/Vue/Svelte/Astro into function/class/method/interface/namespace entities
• JSDoc + decorators: Extracted from AST and prepended to chunk text for richer search context
• Metadata flags: exported, async, abstract tracked per entity
• Qodo-Embed-1-1.5B: 1.5B parameter model, 68.5 CoIR score, 32K context window, 1536-dim embeddings
• Contextual headers: file path + scope chain + flags + decorators + JSDoc prepended for BM25
• File-path boost: Queries containing file names (e.g., "rrf.ts") get a third RRF signal boosting matching files
• Neighbor expansion: Adjacent chunks from the same file are merged for fuller context
• Incremental indexing: Git-diff based (fast, ~50-100ms), falls back to SHA-256 hashing for non-git projects
• No fallback: TEI must be running — search errors if containers are down
• SFC support: Vue <script>/<script setup>, Svelte <script>/<script context="module">, Astro --- frontmatter + <script> tags

Storage

All data stays in your project directory:

your-project/.claude/docs/
├── lancedb/                  # Vector database (docs + code tables)
├── .metadata.json            # Doc fetch timestamps, source URLs per library
├── .code-metadata.json       # File hashes, language, chunk counts, last index
└── raw/
    ├── react.md              # Raw fetched documentation
    ├── next.md
    └── tanstack__query.md

MCP Tools

Dependencies

TEI containers (Docker):

Development

npm run dev         # Watch mode — rebuilds on file changes
npm run build       # One-time build
npm run test:unit   # Unit tests (no TEI needed)
npm run test:docs   # Doc search integration tests (requires TEI on :39281, :39282)
npm run test:code   # Code search integration tests (requires TEI on :39281, :39282, :39283)

Project structure

claude-local-docs/
├── .claude-plugin/
│   ├── plugin.json           # Plugin manifest
│   └── marketplace.json      # Marketplace listing
├── .mcp.json                 # MCP server config (stdio transport)
├── commands/
│   ├── fetch-docs.md         # /fetch-docs — Claude as research agent
│   └── index-codebase.md     # /index-codebase — index source code
├── hooks/
│   └── hooks.json            # SessionStart hook for TEI containers
├── scripts/
│   └── ensure-tei.sh         # Idempotent TEI health check + start
├── docker-compose.yml        # TEI containers (uses ${TEI_TAG})
├── docker-compose.nvidia.yml # NVIDIA GPU device passthrough
├── start-tei.sh              # Auto-detect GPU, start TEI
├── src/
│   ├── index.ts              # MCP server entry, 10 tool definitions
│   ├── tei-client.ts         # Shared TEI HTTP client (retry, timeout, batching)
│   ├── indexer.ts            # Doc chunking + nomic-embed-text embeddings
│   ├── search.ts             # Doc search pipeline (vector + BM25 + RRF + rerank)
│   ├── rrf.ts                # Shared Reciprocal Rank Fusion utility
│   ├── reranker.ts           # TEI cross-encoder reranking
│   ├── store.ts              # LanceDB "docs" table + metadata
│   ├── code-indexer.ts       # AST chunking (tree-sitter) + Qodo-Embed embeddings
│   ├── code-search.ts        # Code search pipeline (5-stage + neighbor expansion)
│   ├── code-store.ts         # LanceDB "code" table + file hash tracking + schema migration
│   ├── file-walker.ts        # Project file discovery + .gitignore + git-diff
│   ├── sfc-extractor.ts      # Vue/Svelte/Astro <script> block extraction
│   ├── fetcher.ts            # Raw HTTP fetch (no AI truncation)
│   ├── workspace.ts          # Monorepo detection + pnpm catalog
│   ├── discovery.ts          # npm registry + URL probing for docs
│   ├── types.ts              # Shared TypeScript interfaces
│   ├── unit.test.ts          # Unit tests (no TEI needed)
│   ├── docs.test.ts          # Doc search integration tests
│   └── code.test.ts          # Code search integration tests
├── LICENSE
├── package.json
└── tsconfig.json

Troubleshooting

TEI containers not starting

# Check Docker is running
docker info

# Check container logs
docker compose logs tei-embed
docker compose logs tei-rerank
docker compose logs tei-code-embed

# Restart
./start-tei.sh --stop && ./start-tei.sh

Port conflicts

If 39281/39282/39283 are in use, override via env vars:

TEI_EMBED_URL=http://localhost:49281 TEI_RERANK_URL=http://localhost:49282 TEI_CODE_EMBED_URL=http://localhost:49283 node dist/index.js

Apple Silicon — slow performance

The default Docker CPU image runs via Rosetta 2. Use native Metal instead:

./start-tei.sh --metal

Requires Rust (curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh). First build takes a few minutes.

License

MIT