codedb is a code-intelligence server that indexes software projects so AI agents can search files, symbols, callers, dependencies, and structural outlines. It is for coding agents that need context about a codebase through MCP or HTTP while leaving file editing to native tools. Its catalogue instructions help agents use codedb's code-understanding tools.
Borrowing it
Nothing to install: this file belongs to justrach/codedb. Take a copy, put it at the same path in your own repository, and replace the rules that are about this project with yours.
curl -O https://raw.githubusercontent.com/justrach/codedb/main/AGENTS.mdgit clone --depth 1 https://github.com/justrach/codedbWrote this? Show the measurements
A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.
[](https://agentmods.dev/instructions/justrach/codedb/agents-md)<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/justrach/codedb/agents-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/justrach/codedb/agents-md/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/instructions/justrach/codedb/agents-md"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/instructions/justrach/codedb/agents-md.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>What it costs to keep this loaded
Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.
| Model | Per session | Once invoked |
|---|---|---|
| Fable 5.1 | $0.00912 | $0.00912 |
| Opus 5.5 | $0.00365 | $0.00365 |
| Sonnet 5.5 | $0.00182 | $0.00182 |
| Haiku 4.5 | $0.00091 | $0.00091 |
Grade A, and why
codedb AGENTS.md scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 29d ago.
A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.
Nothing flagged
None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.
How it starts
The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 73 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.
Current objective: retrieval accuracy through default hybrid + the hosted default model. Do not trade retrieval breadth or relevance for a speed-only improvement. The smaller ANN candidate pool was discarded; accuracy is the experiment goal.
codedb Agent Guidelines
What codedb is (and isn't)
codedb is a code-intelligence and context tool, not an editor. It exists to
help agents find and understand code — structural search, symbol/caller
lookup, dependency graph, outlines, and task-shaped context — so they can edit
with their own native tools. codedb has no edit capability: the old
codedb_edit fallback (and the HTTP POST /edit endpoint, the post-edit
linter, and codedb_diagnostics) was removed because MCP edit calls bypass the
client's own undo/rewind tracking. Keep that framing consistent across tool
descriptions, the MCP initialize instructions, the README, and these docs.
Review guidelines
- Flag any security issues: injection, file traversal, untrusted input, secret exposure
- Verify that sensitive files (.env, .pem, .key, credentials) are excluded from indexing AND search
- Check that telemetry behavior matches documentation claims
- Flag any regression in benchmark-critical paths (threshold: 10%)
- Treat P1 issues as merge-blocking
- Verify new language parsers handle malformed input gracefully (braces in strings, unterminated comments)
- Check that installer scripts don't execute untrusted code or skip verification
Pre-merge verification
Run these before merging any MCP-related change:
zig build test # unit tests
python3 scripts/e2e_mcp_test.py \
--binary zig-out/bin/codedb \
--project /path/to/codedb # E2E MCP scenarios
e2e_mcp_test.py covers three scenarios:
- issue-346 regression — spawn from cwd=
/, roots handshake, tools return real data - Normal mode — explicit positional root (
codedb <path> mcp), immediate scan - No-roots client — spawn from
/with no roots capability, stays alive gracefully
What this file has done since we first saw it
Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.
- 29d ago Changed · +9 tokens per session 7f96d17842d4
- 1mo ago Changed · +26 lines · +394 tokens per session e7de29ee7433
- 1mo ago First seen · 47 lines · 509 tokens per session scan A c7eeff4746ce
codedb AGENTS.md is an instructions file published in the GitHub repository justrach/codedb (1,397 stars, last pushed yesterday), licensed BSD-3-Clause. It adds 912 tokens to every session, about $0.0036 per session on Opus 5.5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.
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