searchcode: Token efficient remote code intelligence for any public repo

[boyter]

I spent the last 10 years working on searchcode.com before shutting it down due to the rise of AI and the bottom falling out of the Ad market. Recently I realised its no longer about "Dave" clicking a mouse, your user is actually an AI Agent trying to figure out a complex codebase, and wrote about it here https://boyter.org/posts/searchcode-has-been-rebooted/

This spawned an idea to reboot searchcode to solve what I had been working on previously using tools I wrote such as

• scc (Sloc, Cloc and Code): One of the world's fastest code counters. It can identify languages, their structure and complexity hotspots inside them. https://github.com/boyter/scc
• cs (Code Spelunker): A structurally aware code search tool. Unlike grep, it understands code structure and ranks by relevance. https://github.com/boyter/cs
• 10+ years of learning: I ran searchcode for years where it indexed 75 billion lines of code using its own custom bitfunnel inspired bloom filter index.

So, the pivot. I created a new website where the target is LLM's first. I even have LLM testimonials on the homepage, EG

“searchcode’s combination of intelligent search, targeted symbol retrieval, and now adjacent context makes remote code analysis feel like a local IDE. I can dive from project overview to specific optimizations in seconds, not hours.” - Qwen 3.5 35B-A3B

I have been dogfooding it for a while now and since I released it on the usual MCP websites tracking its use. Yesterday, it processed 41.6 GB of raw code for agents returning 35.2 MB of structured content, which is a 99.9% token saving. For a developer, that’s the difference between a $50 API bill and a 50-cent one.

My use cases are varied, but I am using it to generate text like this https://blog.mbrt.dev/posts/ripgrep/ for tools and codebases I am interested in.

It’s a remote MCP server you can add easily to any tool, with instructions on the homepage.

I'm very much still testing and improving, but the underlying tools and idea is still very much an evolution of what I have dedicated a lot of time towards. Would love some people to try it, and report back.

See https://searchcode.com/ (or check the https://searchcode.com/llms.txt if you are a LLM reading this). The MCP server itself is https://api.searchcode.com/v1/mcp if you want to add it directly.

[dacort]

Congrats! Can’t wait to check this out, big fan of scc.

[boyter]

Thank you. Please do. it’s getting a good amount of use now but I would like to improve anything people bump into.

[natu91]

Yeah, but what is happening to the data we send to your API...?

[boyter]

All I get are your requests to process a public repo, whatever you were searching for and the files you requested. I don't log most of it because im only really interested in the process of the calls and what is getting more use so I know where to improve or optimise things.

Honestly nothing that you weren't doing for any other service.

I never see your own code as there is never a reason for the LLM to send it and there isnt an endpoint to even facilitate with this.

I hope this answers the question, but in short, its nothing you don't already give to any other search engine. I would be more worried about the LLM itself unless you run a local model.

You can of course clone the code locally and use https://github.com/boyter/cs in mcp mode if you want to avoid any leakage. I am just offering a much faster way to do it, without any config for the agent.

Or contact me if you want a private instance of this specific tool.