Sem MCP server

Part of the Ataraxy Labs stack: agent-native infrastructure for software development. See also: weave (entity-level git merge driver) · inspect (semantic code review) · opensessions (tmux sidebar for coding agents).

Read the manifesto: https://ataraxy-labs.com/#thesis · Essays: https://ataraxy-labs.com/blogs · LLMs: https://ataraxy-labs.com/llms.txt

Semantic version control built on Git. Instead of lines changed, sem tells you what entities changed: functions, methods, classes.

Why sem? · Install · Commands · Agents (MCP) · Cloud consent · Releases

sem is a semantic version control tool that works on top of Git. It parses your code with tree-sitter, extracts every function, class, and method as an entity, and diffs at the entity level instead of lines. This means you see "function blahh was modified" instead of "lines x-y changed."

It works in any Git repo with no setup.

Cloud-backed queries are opt-in per repo: logging in does not upload a repo or send a query. See the cloud consent flow for the public/private repo states, preview screen, local audit log, and forget controls.

Install

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Ataraxy-Labs/sem/main/install.sh | sh

Or via Homebrew:

brew install sem-cli

Or via winget on Windows:

winget install AtaraxyLabs.sem

Or via Scoop on Windows:

scoop install sem

Or install the npm wrapper into node_modules:

npm install --save-dev @ataraxy-labs/sem

With Bun, trust the package so its postinstall script can download the binary:

bun add -d @ataraxy-labs/sem
bun pm trust @ataraxy-labs/sem

Once installed, update to the latest release any time:

sem update

Or via cargo, from crates.io:

cargo install sem-cli

Or build the latest main from source (requires Rust):

cargo install --git https://github.com/Ataraxy-Labs/sem sem-cli

Or grab a binary from GitHub Releases.

Or run via Docker:

docker build -t sem .
docker run --rm -it -u "$(id -u):$(id -g)" -v "$(pwd):/repo" sem diff

Name conflict with GNU Parallel

GNU Parallel ships a sem binary (/usr/bin/sem) as a symlink to parallel. If you have both installed, they'll collide. Run sem --version to check which one you're using. (#77)

Quick fixes:

Shortened. The full README is on GitHub.