AgentsBestFriend (abf)

Give your AI coding agents superpowers — a local MCP server for fast, token-efficient code navigation, search & analysis.

Works with VS Code Copilot, Cursor, Claude Code/Desktop, Codex, Cline, Zed, Gemini CLI, Goose, OpenCode, and any other MCP-compatible agent.

Why?

AI coding agents waste tokens re-reading files and searching blindly. ABF gives them purpose-built tools that return exactly what they need — in compact, structured responses that preserve context.

Tools

Install

npm install -g agentsbestfriend

Prerequisites

• Node.js ≥ 20
• ripgrep — brew install ripgrep (macOS) / apt install ripgrep (Linux)
• git
• Ollama (optional) — for summaries & semantic search: ollama.com

Quick Start

abf init

abf init walks you through everything:

1. Indexes your project — discovers and indexes all files via git ls-files
2. Generates LLM summaries & embeddings (if Ollama is running) — with live (12/80) progress
3. Adds .abf/ to .gitignore — prompts before writing
4. Installs ABF as an MCP server for your agents — you pick which agents (Cursor, VS Code, Claude Code, etc.) and whether to use npx agentsbestfriend start (always latest) or abf start (local install)

Manual Agent Setup

If you prefer to configure manually, add ABF as a stdio MCP server. Using npx is recommended — it always runs the latest published version without requiring a global install:

VS Code / GitHub Copilot (.vscode/mcp.json):

{
  "servers": {
    "abf": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["agentsbestfriend", "start"]
    }
  }
}

Cursor (.cursor/mcp.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "abf": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["agentsbestfriend", "start"]
    }
  }
}

Claude Desktop (claude_desktop_config.json):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "abf": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["agentsbestfriend", "start"]
    }
  }
}

Set ABF_PROJECT_ROOT in the env block if the agent does not pass its working directory automatically.

CLI Commands

abf start             Start MCP server in stdio mode (used by agents)
abf init [path]       Index project, set up .gitignore entry, install MCP for agents
abf skill [path]      Install or update the ABF workflow skill for your coding agents
abf index [path]      Re-index a project (incremental by default)
abf status [path]     Show index stats
abf config            Interactive configuration editor
abf doctor            Health checks (Node, ripgrep, git, Ollama)
abf portal            Interactive TUI dashboard

How It Works

ABF maintains a lightweight SQLite index (.abf/index.db) inside each project root. The index is built once and updated incrementally — only changed files are re-processed. A file watcher keeps it current as you edit.

Optional: LLM Enrichment

With Ollama running locally, ABF generates file summaries and embeddings:

ollama pull qwen2.5-coder:1.5b    # file summaries
ollama pull nomic-embed-text       # embeddings / semantic search

Both abf init and abf portal → Re-index show live progress:

◆  Generating LLM summaries... (14/80)
◆  Generating embeddings... (28/80)

Large files are automatically split into chunks for embedding — no context-length errors.

Without Ollama, all tools still work normally. Semantic search falls back to keyword mode.

Configuration

Global config at ~/.abf/config.json. Edit interactively with abf config or via abf portal.

{
  "llm": {
    "provider": "ollama",
    "ollama": {
      "baseUrl": "http://localhost:11434",
      "summaryModel": "qwen2.5-coder:1.5b",
      "embeddingModel": "nomic-embed-text"
    }
  },
  "indexing": {
    "autoWatch": true,
    "respectGitignore": true,
    "maxFileSizeKb": 512,
    "excludedPatterns": ["*.min.js", "*.min.css", "*.map", "*.lock"]
  },
  "search": {
    "defaultMaxResults": 20
  }
}

Architecture

AgentsBestFriend/
├── packages/
│   ├── core/     Shared logic — DB, config, search, analysis, indexer, LLM
│   ├── server/   MCP server (11 tools)
│   └── cli/      Commander.js CLI + TUI portal
├── turbo.json
└── package.json

Built with Turborepo + pnpm workspaces. Core modules:

Development

# Install dependencies
pnpm install

# Build all packages
pnpm build

# Watch mode
pnpm dev

# Type-check
pnpm type-check

Links

• GitHub: github.com/TheRealFloatDev/AgentsBestFriend
• npm: npmjs.com/package/agentsbestfriend
• Issues: github.com/TheRealFloatDev/AgentsBestFriend/issues
• MCP Spec: modelcontextprotocol.io

License

MIT