Symbols MCP

Read, inspect and navigate through codebase symbols by connecting to Language Servers.

Introduction

By connecting to a Language Server of choice this MCP server makes it easy and efficient for coding agents to explore and navigate the codebase and its dependencies. The server offers a minimal set of tools, resources and skills intended to be simple to use and light on the model's context.

Tools

• outline: returns an outline of code symbols in a file, optionally with a small code snippet
• inspect: returns docs, declaration and implementation locations for a symbol, including third-party ones
• search: returns matching symbols across the codebase
• references: finds all references of a symbol across the codebase
• call_hierarchy: returns incoming and outgoing call relationships for a callable symbol
• rename: renames all references of a symbol across the codebase
• diagnostics: returns active diagnostics in a given file
• completion: returns contextual completions at a given location
• reload: reloads the effective config and reapplies it to currently running language servers

Resources

• language-servers://profiles: returns the configured language servers along with their state.
• language-servers://profiles/{name}: returns a more detailed view of one language server.
• language-servers://profiles/{name}/logs: returns the Language Server logs for troubleshooting.

Skills

• install-language-server: installs, configures, validates, or troubleshoots a language-server profile for the current workspace.
• language-server-navigation: guides symbol inspection, references, rename, diagnostics, and search through Language Server tools before falling back to text search.

Installation

Agent Installation

Install the MCP Server, Agent Skills via Plugins and Extensions and then ask the agent to install any relevant language server for the codebase.

• Add Extension: gemini extensions install p1va/symbols
• Ask Gemini: Please install the language servers relevant to this codebase

• Add MCP Server: codex mcp add language-servers -- npx -y @p1va/symbols@latest start
• Add Language Server Skills: npx skills add p1va/symbols -a codex
• Ask Codex: Please install the language servers relevant to this codebase

Manual Installation

For manual configuration and language servers examples see here.

Development

• pnpm lint outputs the lint violations
• pnpm lint:fix attempts to fix lint violations
• pnpm format formats the codebase
• pnpm dev starts in development mode
• pnpm build runs the linter and build
• pnpm start starts the built artifacts
• pnpm test:unit runs the unit tests
• pnpm test:integration:{language id} runs the integration tests for a given language

Release

• pnpm sync:skills to mirror .agents/skills/ into:
  • skills/ for the Gemini Extension
  • plugins/symbols/skills/ for the Codex Plugin.
• pnpm version patch to bump the version and create the tag. Then:
  • pnpm sync:version to update plugin and extension manifests.
  • git push --follow-tags to push the commit and tag.