Citepath MCP server

Citepath

Self-hosted search over your documentation, with citations, for AI assistants and apps.

Index docs websites and local folders, then let Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client answer from the current docs, with a link to every section it used.

Quick start · Demo · Why not RAG? · Commands · Docs · Contributing

Status: pre-release (0.1). Expect breaking changes before 1.0.

What it does

• 📚 Indexes your docs: documentation websites (from the sitemap or by following links, respecting robots.txt) and local Markdown, MDX, or text folders.
• 🔗 Returns cited passages: each search result links to the exact page section or file lines it came from.
• 🧠 Understands code and plain English: getUserName, --dry-run, and "how do I configure caching" all work.
• 🤖 Connects to AI assistants: Claude Code, Cursor, and other MCP clients search your docs; your own tools use the CLI or a local HTTP API.
• 🔒 Runs locally: no account, no API keys, no telemetry. Assistants get read-only access, and a failed sync never deletes good data.

Citepath finds passages; it doesn't write answers. Your assistant writes the answer from those passages and cites them, so you can check every claim.

Demo

Index the current Next.js docs once, then search them:

citepath add nextjs --url https://nextjs.org/docs/app --include '/docs/app/**' --sync

The same search works inside your assistant:

You: Using citepath, how do I set how long cached data lives in Next.js?

Claude: Add 'use cache' to the function and call cacheLife('hours'), or pass { stale, revalidate, expire }. This requires cacheComponents: true in next.config.ts.

Sources: cacheLife, use cache, cacheComponents

Who it's for

• Developers using AI coding assistants: answers based on the current docs of your frameworks and services, not on what the model remembers.
• Builders of AI tools: a retrieval layer that returns ranked, cited passages as JSON for any model.
• Small teams: internal wikis, runbooks, and docs folders searchable by assistants, without a hosted platform.
• Open-source maintainers: an easy way for users to connect your project's docs to their assistants.

Why not RAG or web search?

It is RAG: the retrieval half, run locally. Instead of embeddings and a vector database, Citepath uses a keyword index. That means no embedding API or keys, exact matches on identifiers like cacheLife, the same results for the same query, and citations down to the section. The trade-off: it matches words, not meaning, so "sign in" won't find a page that only says "authentication".

Web search is better for broad, one-off questions. Citepath is better when:

Shortened. The full README is on GitHub.