How do I install Big Indexer?

Copy the stdio config for Cursor, Claude Desktop, Claude Code, or VS Code on this page. It uses the publisher's install, not a PlugMCP proxy.

Does Big Indexer need an API key?

No required environment variable is listed on this record.

What transport does Big Indexer use?

Big Indexer runs locally over stdio.

When was Big Indexer last checked?

Last checked 2026-11-09. Architecture-aware MCP context with boundaries, seams, impact scope, and BGI-TWIN guidance.

Big Indexer MCP server

BGI - Big Indexer

BGI is a static architecture analysis tool for large codebases. It groups code units by behavioral role and emits explicit architectural boundaries. Project domain: bigindexer.com

Use via MCP Registry

Big Indexer is published in the MCP Registry as io.github.ahmedxuhri/bigindexer.

pip install bigindexer==0.1.3
bgi mcp --graph bgi-graph.json --fuse-graph fuse-graph.json

Validation: https://bigindexer.com/validation

What problem this solves

Most architecture graphs fail at scale in two ways:

too many noisy edges
giant clusters that collapse unrelated components together

BGI is built to keep both under control, so the output remains usable on large repos.

What you can do with it

"Where should this boundary be before we refactor?"
BGI groups units by behavioral role (COV tokens + DRS clustering) so likely component boundaries are visible.
"Which subsystem coupling is risky?"
BGI surfaces high-coupling seams and fuse-boundary signals between clusters so integration risk is easier to spot.
"How do we plug architecture data into automation?"
BGI emits machine-readable artifacts (bgi-graph.json, fuse-graph.json) plus optional human context (bigindexer.md).
"How do we make AI changes less random?"
MCP tools (task_fingerprint, behavioral_twins, twin_context) ground prompts in in-repo behavior patterns.
"Can I run this automatically on PRs as a live example?"
Yes — use the dedicated action repo ahmedxuhri/bigindexer-pr-risk-bot to auto-comment PRs with blast radius, seams, and risk hints.

30-second demo

Run BGI on the included fixture repo:

git clone https://github.com/ahmedxuhri/bigindexer
cd bigindexer
pip install -e .
bgi scan tests/fixtures --lang python --out /tmp/bgi-example.json
head -50 /tmp/bgi-example.json

Observed result on this repository:

units: 12
edges: 14
clusters: 2
max cluster in sample: 6 units

One produced edge looks like:

{
  "source": "auth_module.py::AuthService::__init__",
  "target": "auth_module.py::AuthService::__del__",
  "key": "COV.INIT",
  "lock": "COV.TEARDOWN",
  "type": "HARD"
}

Why this matters: instead of raw syntax references only, you get behavioral relationships plus cluster structure that can drive architecture decisions.

Plain-English glossary

BGI term	Plain meaning
COV token	A behavior label for a unit (for example: `FETCH`, `PERSIST`, `AUTHENTICATE`)
Key-Lock edge	A behavioral connection between two units with complementary roles
DRS cluster	A unit-level grouping by behavioral role. Mostly intra-file in practice. File-level architectural components are better expressed via the BGI edge graph or the fuse-graph boundary signal — see external benchmark
Fuse edge / fuse event	A refused merge because cluster growth hit the cap; treated as boundary signal
Spectral masks	Scope rules that limit where matching is allowed (global, directory, file)

Architecture in one view

Source files
   ->
Gate 1: fingerprint unit behavior (COV tokens)
   ->
Gate 2: create behavioral edges with scoped matching
   ->
Gate 3: cluster with hard size cap + boundary emission
   ->
Artifacts: bgi-graph.json, fuse-graph.json, bigindexer.md, optional routes/graphml/html

Core approach:

TOKEN-CENSUS - classify token frequency per repo.
SPECTRAL-MASKS - restrict match scope by token frequency.
FUSE-MAP - cap cluster growth and record refused merges.
MASK-4-GATE-3 - use import proximity as clustering signal.
WATER-CLOCK + .scm - single-pass query extraction path in Gate 1.

Why BGI is different from common alternatives

Capability	LSP / SCIP index	Call-graph + generic community detection	BGI
Fast symbol lookup	Strong	Medium	Available (Phase 6 index)
Behavioral token model	No	Usually no	Yes
Hard-bounded clustering	No	Usually no	Yes (unit-level)
First-class boundary artifact	No	Usually no	Yes (`fuse-graph.json`)
Scope-constrained edge generation	Limited	Rare	Yes (spectral masks)

External head-to-head benchmark (Louvain on BGI's edges vs Louvain on raw imports, scored against package layout): BGI's edges win on Python (django F1 0.38 vs 0.29, MoJoFM 0.45 vs 0.34) and currently tie/lose on Go due to lower cross-file edge density on tier-2 scanners. Full results and methodology in docs/VALIDATION_EVIDENCE.md.

Evidence (current, verifiable)

Large-repo scale evidence

Comparable kubernetes sample (go comparable mode, 162,917 units):

Gate 1: 141.964s
Gate 2: 67.261s (historical comparable baseline: 138.869s)
Gate 3: 9.359s
Total: 218.584s
Max cluster: 1.113%
Fuse events: 0

Artifact: output/validation/kubernetes-optionb-controlled-median-v21.json

Quality guard evidence (beyond raw speed)

Gate 2 scope safety tests block invalid cross-scope merges (see tests/test_gate2.py).
Gate 3 tests verify no legacy namespace over-merge without import evidence (see tests/test_gate3.py).
Current full suite status: python3 -m pytest tests/ -x -q (project baseline target remains passing).

Evidence summary

Current published validation set: 100 scored runs across 5 repos and 3 models.
Full 20-run post-shipment benchmark refresh for BGI-TWIN context (task → COV → top-3 twins + seam + rubric) is complete: actionability 4.75/5 (p04 slice: 4.8/5), boundary 1.0, hallucinations 0.
Independent-model replication is now complete on azure/gpt-4o (20 runs) and gemini/auto (20 runs): GPT-4o actionability 4.85/5, Gemini actionability 4.25/5, both with zero hallucinations; Gemini boundary 0.95 reflects one genuine django/p02 miss.
Still missing: labeled precision/recall benchmark on an external corpus and head-to-head quantitative benchmark vs external tools on the same labeled dataset.

Language support tiers (explicit)

BGI does not treat all languages equally; support is tiered:

Query-backed (.scm): python, typescript, tsx, javascript, go, rust, java, csharp, php, ruby, kotlin, scala
Tree-sitter scanner + rule path: c, lua, elixir
Generic regex fallback by extension: swift, r, dart, bash, nim, zig, haskell, ocaml, fsharp, clojure, erlang, matlab, vb, crystal, cobol, groovy

Use this as a reliability signal: query-backed and dedicated scanner tiers are stronger than generic fallback.

Cross-file edge density caveat: the language tiers above describe parser quality. A separate axis is cross-file behavioral edge density — how many key-lock pairs the scanner produces that link units in different files. Tier-1 (.scm-backed) languages produce dense cross-file edges. Tier-2 scanner-backed languages currently produce sparser cross-file edges because their token mix is dominated by structural tokens (INTAKE/OUTPUT/CONDITIONAL/LOOP) that gate-2 deliberately scopes to same-file to prevent O(N²) noise. The user-visible MCP product (boundary detection, twin retrieval, AI-assistant context) still works on tier-2 languages — see the validation evidence — but cluster-recovery benchmarks against import-graph baselines reflect this density gap. Concrete numbers in docs/VALIDATION_EVIDENCE.md.

Limitations and non-goals

BGI is static analysis; it does not ingest runtime traces.
Cross-file semantic resolution is heuristic and language-dependent.
Cluster-size health is measured; full external precision/recall is not yet published.
Shared-host benchmarking introduces variance; decisions should use controlled medians.

Install

pip install -e .

Quickstart commands

# scan
bgi scan /path/to/repo --lang auto --out bgi-graph.json

# optional outputs
bgi scan /path/to/repo --lang auto \
  --fuse-graph fuse-graph.json \
  --routes routes.json \
  --graphml graph.graphml \
  --html

# incremental
bgi scan /path/to/repo --lang auto --incremental --cache .bgi-cache.json

# diff
bgi diff /path/before /path/after --lang auto --out diff.json

# run MCP server over generated artifacts
bgi mcp --graph bgi-graph.json --fuse-graph fuse-graph.json

Example MCP usage pattern (from your client prompt):

Use MCP tool twin_context for:
"Add endpoint that validates input and persists data."
Return top twin candidate, seam suggestion, and rubric checklist.

Telemetry

BGI ships with opt-in, off-by-default anonymous telemetry. To enable:

export BGI_TELEMETRY=1
bgi mcp --graph bgi-graph.json --fuse-graph fuse-graph.json

What's collected when enabled: BGI version, OS, repo size bucket, and a 12-char hash of your repo's git remote (so we can deduplicate "same repo seen twice" without ever knowing which repo). What's never collected: file paths, source code, repo names, user identity, or IP addresses. Full schema and disable instructions in docs/TELEMETRY.md.

Documentation map

MEMORANDUM.md - design contracts and invariants
docs/LANGUAGE_SUPPORT.md - language implementation details
docs/CONTRIBUTING_LANGUAGES.md - language contribution guide
docs/INDEX_SCHEMA.md - interactive index schema
docs/QUERY_PLANNER.md - query planner scoring
docs/MCP_SETUP.md - MCP server setup and usage
docs/MCP_WITH_CONTINUE.md - 5-minute Continue + BGI walkthrough
docs/TELEMETRY.md - opt-in telemetry: what we collect and how to disable
https://bigindexer.com/validation - public validation evidence
docs/MCP_QUICKSTART_DEMO.md - 5-minute demo walkthrough
docs/MCP_EXAMPLE_TRANSCRIPTS.md - real-world MCP tool invocation examples
docs/MCP_REAL_TRANSCRIPT.md - unedited transcript from FastAPI analysis
scripts/mcp-demo.sh - automated demo script for multiple CLIs and repositories

License and Copyright

License: Apache License 2.0 (LICENSE)
Contributor terms: Developer Certificate of Origin (DCO) enforced on pull requests

Legal

Big Indexer is a product of SUDO SOFTWARES LTD, registered in England and Wales (Company No. 16976948). Contact: [email protected] · https://bigindexer.com

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