The full upstream README, mirrored here for reference. Install config, tool schemas, adoption signals, and an original overview live on the Girder listing page.
Girder gives coding agents exactly the code they need, instead of whole files. It parses your repository into a living semantic graph — functions, definitions, call edges — and answers questions against that graph: exact function source, callers and callees, impact analysis, minimal test selection, and verified graph-addressed edits. It is one static Rust binary that any agent can drive over MCP, plus an optional native IDE.
Languages: Rust, Python, TypeScript/TSX, and Go. Rust and Python are the most mature; TypeScript and Go are measured and gated, with their limits written down (TypeScript, Go).
Tiers: the free tier is permanent and needs no account — get_source,
find_definition, search_code, ask_codebase, review_changes, and
orient on a single repository. The impacted_tests tool needs a
paid license. Keys are verified offline; the binary never phones
home.
On the committed 15-task orient measurement, one bundled call per task
returned 48,814 output bytes versus 101,302, using 15 calls versus 78
for the equivalent command chain, with 37/37 gated checks passing after
the disclosed fixes. See the post-fix observation
and limitations. These are output bytes,
not tokens, and the baseline is Girder's separate commands.
A prebuilt binary, no Rust toolchain needed:
Or from source:
This builds the default headless profile and installs the girder binary to
~/.cargo/bin (make sure it's on your PATH). No GPU, display, network, or API
key is required — the default AI provider is an offline MockProvider. The GUI
and live AI providers are opt-in Cargo features not included in a plain
install; see The GUI and Local-first AI below.
Each Windows release also includes Girder-<version>-setup.exe. It installs
for the current user under %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\Girder, adds Girder to the
user PATH, creates a Start Menu shortcut, and does not request administrator
access. Open a new terminal after installation so it sees the updated PATH.
The installer includes the desktop GUI, and its Start Menu shortcut opens it.
The archives and npm installation continue to provide the headless CLI.
The installer is not code-signed yet, so Windows SmartScreen will warn on first run. After downloading the installer from the GitHub release, double-click it, choose More info on the “Windows protected your PC” dialog, verify that the app is Girder and the publisher is shown as unknown, then choose Run anyway. If those details do not match, cancel instead.
Exact-symbol lookup is Girder's strongest search path. Natural-language intent search is experimental: it reached 41.9% top-1 and 77.4% top-5 accuracy on the committed 31-item corpus, below the precommitted 75% and 90% thresholds. See the observation and policy.
On the 20-task modest cross-language base set, Girder passed 5/20 versus Ripwire's 7/20 — a loss. But across the 60 attempts where both products passed, Girder returned 35,764 bytes versus Ripwire's 158,514 — 77.4% fewer — at identical call counts (120 each). GitNexus could not be scored: its install exceeded the frozen 1 GiB ceiling on this measurement machine, which is a fact about install footprint on a constrained host, not a claim about its quality.
No product in this benchmark reached full correctness, and the benchmark does not establish an overall best product. See the full report for methodology, per-language results, and everything the numbers above don't establish.
girder mcp serves the read-only graph commands over the
Model Context Protocol, so an agent can ask
about your codebase instead of reading files into its context window.
Preview the changes, then configure detected agents:
setup detects Claude Code (~/.claude or an existing in-home project
.mcp.json), Codex (~/.codex or an in-home CODEX_HOME), and Cursor
(~/.cursor). It merges the girder MCP entry into each detected agent's
documented config and installs nested PreToolUse and PostToolUse hooks for
Claude Code and Codex. Pre hooks cover structured Read, read_file, and
mcp__.*__read_file events; post hooks cover Claude's
Edit|Write|NotebookEdit and Codex's apply_patch|Edit|Write edit names.
Shell commands are intentionally not parsed. Cursor is MCP-only: its documented
post-edit hook input and output semantics do not establish the standalone
additional-context protocol used by this launcher, so setup does not register a
hook there. A generic MCP client has no universal config path and is reported as
not detected. Setup never writes outside your home directory. Existing foreign
girder entries remain untouched, including with --force; girder setup --uninstall removes only setup-owned changes.
The packaged hook launcher forwards each event to the pinned native girder hook
executable and fails open on errors. Only standalone PreToolUse JSON is
forwarded on stdout; post-edit native diagnostics pass through stderr, and MCP
continues to use JSON-RPC on its own stdout. The read advisory only gives
guidance when project.aether already exists. The post-edit advisory uses that
saved graph snapshot, does not scan or rebuild the project, and describes the
last analyzed version of changed files. See the setup and client path
guide for config paths, ownership, and the manual JSON
fallback.
For clients setup cannot detect, add this entry to their documented MCP config manually:
With a binary already installed, "command": "girder", "args": ["mcp", "."]
skips npm entirely.
Girder 0.2.6 and later can opt into a cached graph generation with
girder mcp . --watch or npx -y girder-mcp . --watch. The server keeps
one validated graph generation in memory and incrementally reparses changed
files. The committed watcher measurement matched fresh cold analysis after all
45 mutations while reusing 98.70% of file extractions; the claim is limited to
preserving cold-analysis resolution while reusing parsing. See the
watcher result and limitations.
Seven tools, all read-only:
| Tool | What it answers | Tier |
|---|---|---|
get_source | The source of specific functions, without the file around them. | Free |
find_definition | Where an exact identifier is declared. Not a substring search. | Free |
search_code | Which functions match a description, when you don't know the name. | Free |
ask_codebase | Callers, callees, and blast radius, by graph traversal. | Free |
impacted_tests | Only the tests that can reach what changed. | Paid |
review_changes | What changed in the working tree, as semantics rather than text. | Free |
orient | Source, callers, callees, tests, and impact for one node, in one call. | Free |
orient bundles what get_source + ask_codebase (callers, callees, and
impact) + impacted_tests otherwise answer across 5-6 separate calls into
one. On a 15-task corpus spanning ten pinned repositories, that one call used
fewer aggregate bytes than the chain it replaces (48,814 vs 101,302,
a 0.48 ratio) while cutting 78 round trips to 15 — one per task — and, after
two disclosed defects were fixed, 37 of 37 gated checks pass. The first
run found impacted_tests --quiet silently dropping non-Rust/Python test
names (orient's own test-coverage section did not share the bug, which is
how it was found); that filter is now removed. Its natural-language intent
input still inherits search_code's accuracy — all three intent tasks in
this corpus resolved to the wrong node, unchanged and out of scope for this
fix — but orient's confidence heuristic, which originally caught none of
the three, now flags all three "confidence": "low" with candidate scores
attached, at the cost of also flagging some correct resolutions when a
runner-up is close. See docs/orient-tool.md and
the committed policy /
original observation /
post-fix observation.
Two additional precommitted measurements, both counting bytes of command output rather than tokens (no tokenizer was run):
get_source against a naive whole-file-read baseline: 97.85% fewer bytes across ten
functions sampled by source-size decile, cheaper on all ten
(docs/context-vs-read-cost.md).find_definition against a plain-grep baseline: 97.98% fewer bytes across ten
identifiers (docs/names-cost.md).Both are single-repository measurements. The direction is structural — files
are much larger than the functions in them, and grep returns every mention
where find_definition returns only declarations — but the exact percentages
are not portable.
These comparisons do not measure a competent agent choosing grep searches and bounded file reads adaptively. No agentic-grep cost claim is established here.
The subsequent agentic-grep campaign with a local 1.5B model stopped incomplete and produced no pairs with two correct answers. It establishes no comparative cost advantage or frontier-model behavior.
impacted_tests is advisory. It over-selects unrelated tests, and it
misses tests reached only through dynamic dispatch (measured: recall 0.000 on a
polymorphic-dispatch case, docs/core-representative-mutations.md).
A full test run remains the authority before calling a change safe.
Selecting extra tests costs CPU time; missing a relevant test can conceal a regression.
The project root is fixed when the server starts, so no tool call can reach
another directory. GIRDER_MCP_TIMEOUT_SECONDS (default 120) bounds each
call; raise it for a very large repository.
Everything below assumes girder is on your PATH. Building from a source
checkout without installing works the same way with cargo run -p aether-app --
in place of girder.
Use the CLI to build and query a repository's semantic graph:
analyze/forge walk every .rs, .py, .ts, .tsx, .mts, .cts, and
.go file (skipping target, .git, …),
build the graph with directory-aware module paths, resolve free and
receiver-qualified method calls across files, and persist the .aether graph.
Supported languages are Rust, Python, TypeScript/TSX, and Go. The TypeScript and Go
graph surfaces are measured and gated, but remain less mature than Rust and
Python: TypeScript meets its precision and recall gates, while Go currently
records one false negative (micro-recall 0.954545 against a 1.0 gate). See the
honest support boundaries and results for
TypeScript and Go, with the
committed observations for
TypeScript and
Go.
Rust module-scope imports retain renamed symbol identity across bounded public
re-export chains, including crate-root and mod.rs facades, so collisions are
resolved by exact path while ambiguous or cyclic aliases stay unlinked.
Rust parameter annotations and direct type-qualified local constructors provide
bounded receiver types, including inside macro token trees. Function signatures
also supply parser-owned return types for local factory bindings through ?,
unwrap/expect, and result-preserving error adapters. Instance factories
returning Self resolve to their owning type, while single-argument generic
wrappers propagate an inner receiver only when their signatures prove the same
direct type parameter flows through. Recursive factory hints have a hard size
budget. Unknown receiver types remain unresolved rather than being linked to an
unrelated same-named method.
forge plans every candidate byte, checks conflict
baselines, validates the candidate in a copied workspace, runs Cargo build/tests
when a manifest is present plus configured validation commands, and only then
journal-commits the source projection and graph together.
collab exchanges semantic graph operations rather than text ranges. Each
human or agent replica has a validated actor id and causal version vector;
minimal idempotent deltas converge regardless of delivery order. Concurrent
deletes win, concurrent updates have a deterministic tie-break, and deleting
then recreating a node cannot resurrect edges from its old generation. RON
.aetherc bundles are reviewable; .aethercb bundles use compact bincode.
Init/sync reconciles source with the durable graph so graph-owned agent and
extension metadata participates instead of being discarded. Bundle saves use a
synced atomic replacement.
Membership is part of the causal operation history rather than a local address
book. An approved collab fork registers the invited actor in both the source
and forked bundles; if writing the fork fails, the source roster is rolled back.
collab member add|remove ... --approve records convergent add/remove
operations, concurrent removal wins, normal replica APIs reject new operations
after the local actor is removed, and membership changes invalidate stale
acknowledgements. A history has one genesis self-membership root: separately
initialized actors cannot self-invite through a relayed delta. Removal records
the highest counter observed for that actor; unseen later counters fail until
their context observes a causal re-add, so a removed offline actor cannot keep
extending a stale membership epoch. Version
1 and 2 bundles migrate conservatively by retaining the local actor, previously
acknowledged peers, and non-bootstrap actors already present in the causal
clock. Use fork to allocate a new actor replica; direct member add is for
re-authorizing an already allocated unique actor, since it does not create that
actor's bundle. Version 1-3 bundles load as explicit unsigned legacy history;
version 4 stores operation attestations without changing existing CRDT dots.
Live host/join uses fresh random challenges, mutual HMAC-SHA256 group authentication, direction- and sequence-bound message integrity, bounded frames checked before allocation, and socket timeouts. Secrets are read from non-symlink regular files owned by the current user with private permissions. Optional identity mode adds transcript-bound Ed25519 proofs and a local actor-to-key trust store: both endpoints must configure it, each public key must match the peer actor's exact pinned fingerprint, and either attempted downgrade to group-secret-only mode is refused. The signed transcript also authenticates fresh X25519 keys, deriving a session-integrity key that another group-secret holder cannot calculate from captured traffic. Private identity files receive the same ownership, symlink, and permission checks. New trust, rotation, and removal are explicit fingerprint-approved operations, and identity files are actor-bound to their collaboration bundle.
Strict identity sessions also give every retained non-bootstrap CRDT operation a
durable Ed25519 attestation. A delta importing a new operation, or a new
retroactive attestation for an already-known dot, triggers verification of that
actor's complete retained history before any bundle is replaced. The signature
binds the dot, causal context, and exact action, so action tampering, actor
forgery, unsigned relay, conflicting proofs, and replayed dot changes fail
atomically. Local legacy operations can be upgraded with identity attest;
identity verify audits a whole bundle against the local private identity and
peer trust store.
Key rotation is a causal operation signed by the previous key with a second
proof from the successor key. Verification walks this chain backward from the
currently pinned fingerprint, so a retired key remains valid for its historical
counters but cannot authorize later ones. Rotation operations are never removed
by compaction. Deterministic bootstrap snapshot operations remain an explicitly
pre-shared bundle baseline rather than pretending to have a human signature;
strict deltas cannot introduce new bootstrap history. Group-secret-only live
sessions and the unpinned collab merge workflow ignore incoming attestation
metadata, preventing an unauthenticated path from poisoning later strict
verification. Actor-key transparency beyond exact local pins is still a
separate layer.
The transport deliberately binds loopback only: graph payloads are authenticated but not encrypted, so remote peers must connect through an encrypted tunnel such as SSH. After both sides verify that the other actor is active in the roster and durably persist a converged version, they persist monotonic peer acknowledgements. A delta that would remove either authenticated endpoint is rejected before persistence. A session claiming an unlisted actor is rejected even with a valid group-secret proof. Host and join may explicitly share a single-line status of at most 256 UTF-8 bytes. Both statuses and optional public keys are bound into the authenticated handshake. Status is reported to the peer and discarded after that synchronization; it is never written to graph operations, acknowledgements, discovery tickets, or collaboration bundles.
An optional --discovery-dir publishes an atomic, HMAC-authenticated,
process-bound lease for the loopback host. The current-user directory and
tickets must be private (new paths are mode 700 and 600 on Unix), symlinks are
rejected, each scan is capped at 256 entries, dead process ids on Unix and
actors outside the local bundle's active remote roster are ignored, and
join-peer refuses ambiguous same-actor tickets. A normal host shutdown removes
its unchanged ticket.
Tickets are only endpoint hints: PID reuse or a stale ticket cannot authorize a
session because the existing roster-bound mutual-authentication handshake still
decides every join.
collab compact
requires an acknowledgement from every active remote member, then prunes only
causally superseded operations while retaining concurrent winners, membership
removal barriers, and node-generation tombstones. Peers older than the recorded
history floor fail safely and need a current bundle. Network/continuous
discovery, continuous presence/subscriptions, encrypted remote transport, and
operation-level signatures/key transparency remain future work.
Group-secret-only migration mode remains a group credential: roster checks
reject an unlisted claimed actor, but any secret holder can impersonate an
active actor. Pinned identity mode prevents that endpoint impersonation after
fingerprints have been verified. It does not retroactively prove the author of
every historical CRDT operation: authenticated peers can relay the existing
multi-actor operation set, so provenance of stored history remains trusted at
the collaboration-group boundary until operations themselves are signed.
Every parsed module carries a bounded file-v1 whole-file projection in the
semantic graph. collab review compares the remote and freshly reconciled local
graphs, lists file and semantic changes, and reparses every remote file to prove
its nodes and projection-derived edges agree with the claimed graph. Missing
modules, path escapes, oversized files, inconsistent concurrent winners, and
stale local baselines are conflicts. collab apply --approve reruns the plan,
executes configured validation in an isolated candidate, then journal-commits
added/modified/deleted files and the reconciled graph together. Native approval
is SHA-256-bound to every candidate and expected baseline byte, so any project
or bundle change forces another review.
Girder works without configuration. To materialize and inspect the validated defaults for a project:
girder.toml controls source roots and ignore globs, symlink policy, graph
storage, structured impacted-test commands, the agent output module/file, and
candidate-validation commands, timeouts, diagnostic limits, and copy budgets.
Commands are argv arrays rather than interpolated shell strings. On Linux,
available bubblewrap support mounts the host filesystem read-only while the
candidate and approved build caches remain writable; other platforms still run
inside the disposable candidate copy. Invalid keys, escaping paths, broken
globs, unsupported graph extensions, malformed commands, and unsupported config
versions fail before project analysis starts.
girder context + plan run --authoredgirder do drives a wired-in provider (OpenAI, Anthropic, Ollama, or the
offline MockProvider) automatically. girder context and plan run --authored split that same workflow at the model boundary, so any chat
model — one with no API integration in this codebase at all — can author a
verified graph edit.
Reading, not authoring? Add
--source-only. The default output below carries a Plan Format v2 schema and plan skeleton, which is a fixed ~6 KB that a model authoring an edit needs and a model merely reading code does not — it measured more expensive than reading the whole file on 2 of 10 nodes, and 15.6× the file for a small one.--source-onlydrops the envelope and measured 97.85% cheaper than a file read across the same ten nodes (docs/context-vs-read-cost.md). It also needs no git repository, having nobase_committo pin.
The authoring loop:
A passing run applies the edit to the real tree and writes a report under
.girder/reports/; a failing check rolls the tree back to base_commit
automatically, so a bad edit from an untrusted external model never lands
half-applied. plan_schema()'s exact shape (a oneOf discriminated union
per edit/check kind, matching planfile::schema's deserializer field for
field) is what makes step 2 reliable — see gap 17 in
docs/core-gap-analysis.md for the defect this
closed and the round-trip test that proves it.
demo-project/, never sample-project/girder do and plan run --authored both refuse sample-project/ as a
target outright, with an error naming demo-project/ as the place to run
instead:
sample-project/ is a pinned baseline tools/authoring_task_check.py and
tools/plan_executor_oracle.py read against a specific clean source commit
for the graph-addressed-authoring-cost measurement corpus, not a scratch
target. A real (non-dry) authored write there mutates the same file the
measurement harness depends on — this happened twice, three days apart, and
cost a full day of debugging a broken referee before the fixture drift was
found; see gap 18 in docs/core-gap-analysis.md. demo-project/ exists so
that never has to happen again: a small, disposable Python project nothing
under tools/ or docs/ reads, safe for real (non-dry) authored writes.
Read-only commands (context, search, analyze, test-impact) still work
against sample-project/ — only the two commands that write are refused.
girder (no args) walks the entire pipeline over stdout:
sys.settrace,
branches a what-if alternative (variable overridden at a specific step via
CPython's PyFrame_LocalsToFast), shows exactly where the two timelines diverge.| Crate | Role |
|---|---|
aether-graph | The living semantic graph: nodes/edges, impact analysis, .aether serialization, and convergent collaboration replicas. Source of truth. |
aether-builder | tree-sitter → graph mapping, incremental edit sync, syntax-highlight spans. |
aether-ai | AiProvider trait, offline MockProvider, OpenAI/Anthropic live providers, multi-provider Router, provider extension points. |
aether-agents | The parallel swarm: message bus, orchestrator, 8 specialized agents. |
aether-debugger | Recording interpreter, execution trace, branching timeline, what-if + AI root-cause. |
aether-dap | Debug Adapter Protocol client/session layer with graph-aware breakpoint support. |
aether-extensions | Strict declarative recipes, digest-bound grants, graph-native lifecycle, bounded UI and project contributions. |
aether-app | The girder binary: every CLI subcommand, plus the egui/wgpu GUI behind feature gui. |
The native workspace opens a configured project, indexes its Rust, Python, and TypeScript source, provides file navigation and language-aware editing, folds edits into the graph, and reconciles those fresh projections with the durable graph. Agent summaries, graph-owned nodes, and inferred relationships survive reopen and editor refresh while source-derived structure follows the files on disk.
The semantic graph is an interactive navigation surface rather than a static diagram. Its retained force layout keeps positions stable while the graph changes; pan/zoom, fit-to-view, text search, node/edge type filters, one- and two-hop focus, viewport culling, and zoom-dependent labels keep large graphs legible. At overview scale, implementation nodes and their relationships collapse into weighted module-level connections; zooming in restores exact types, functions, and enabled relationships. The overview ranks and bounds module connections so the strongest architectural signals remain readable. Selecting a node exposes its source location and agent metadata, and double-clicking or choosing Open source moves the editor cursor to its span.
Editor saves use a recoverable journaled transaction for the source projection and semantic graph. Dirty buffers guard project/file switches, saves detect external source or graph changes, and startup rolls back an interrupted multi-file commit before indexing. GUI agent runs mutate a checkpointed graph and remain visibly pending while validation runs off the render thread. Commit stays disabled until the exact graph snapshot passes candidate build/tests; diagnostics remain inspectable and failed candidates can be revalidated or rolled back. Commit projects generated functions to the configured output file and persists the graph, while Roll back cancels validation and restores the pre-run graph without touching source files.
The right workspace has separate Agents, Extensions, Collaboration, and Author views. Extensions contains Generate, Marketplace, and Installed tabs. Extension generation returns a strict JSON recipe; installation stays disabled until the user reviews its exact SHA-256 digest, capabilities, contributions, projections, and full JSON. The marketplace searches bounded declarative catalogs, displays the catalog and listing/reference-recipe fingerprints plus reviews bound to both, and regenerates a listing intent against a bounded sample of the current semantic graph. Adapted recipes preserve the listing ID and show every added/removed capability scope. A catalog review never grants installation authority: the adapted recipe still requires a fresh approval bound to its own exact digest. Reviewer identities are catalog metadata rather than cryptographic signatures; verify an external catalog's printed SHA-256 fingerprint through the channel that distributed it.
The Collaboration view initializes, inspects, and synchronizes the full
workspace graph, generates private secrets, verifies bounded local discovery
tickets, and lets the user select an authenticated active-roster endpoint
before joining on a background thread so rendering never blocks. It shows
causal version/operation counts and the deterministic conflict policy, durable
acknowledgements, and compacted history floor; it can conservatively compact
acknowledged history. A live join updates the collaboration bundle only.
Optional identity controls generate an actor-bound key, display a peer's exact
fingerprint for out-of-band review, pin the unchanged public file, list trusted
actors, and make strict identity mode visibly distinct from legacy group-secret
mode. Explicit rotation/removal remains available in the CLI.
Separate Review and Apply controls keep remote graph-to-source projection
explicit, consistency-checked, digest-bound, validated, and atomic. CLI host
is the persistent serving surface.
The Author view exposes both authoring paths from "External authoring"
above without a terminal: type an intent, click Search to run the same
concept search girder do/context use (only the top-scored hit starts
checked — narrower than the CLI default on purpose, since gap 15 in
docs/core-gap-analysis.md exists to shrink what a model can touch), and
adjust the checkboxes to pin the exact nodes a plan may edit — the same
--nodes a terminal invocation would otherwise require typing full paths
for. Local model mode mirrors girder do: Run streams each
provider attempt into a live log and shows pass/fail plus the report.
External model mode mirrors girder context + plan run --authored:
Copy context JSON puts exactly what the CLI command would print onto the
clipboard, paste a model's plan response back in, and Run authored
applies the same guarantees (forced rollback_plan, the mandatory
tests.impacted check, zero-step refusal). A non-dry Run in either mode
requires a second, explicit confirming click — a GUI button that silently
writes to the tree has no command line to review first. Open demo-project/
to try the full loop for real:
Then, in the Author tab: type "add an exclamation mark to the farewell",
click Search, leave crate::greeter::farewell checked, and either click Run
(Local model) or use Copy Context JSON / paste a plan back in / Run authored
(External model) — Dry run stays checked by default in both, so nothing
writes to the tree until it's unchecked and confirmed. Like girder do
against a terminal, both refuse sample-project/ outright; only
demo-project/ (or another project you point it at) accepts a real,
non-dry Run.
Installed records and their contribution nodes live in the semantic graph and survive source reconciliation. Enable/disable affects only contribution visibility. Removal conflict-checks every installed projection, restores replaced files, deletes files created by the extension, and commits the project plus graph as one recoverable transaction. Model output is never loaded as native code. Contributed validation commands resolve back to an installed, enabled recipe and require Bubblewrap; they run with networking disabled and a cleared environment in the disposable candidate workspace.
CI type-checks the gui feature on the stable Rust toolchain. Rendering needs a
GPU — or a software Vulkan adapter (Mesa lavapipe) plus the usual X11 libs
(e.g. libxkbcommon-x11). If no surface can be created the binary logs the wgpu
error and falls back to the headless demo automatically, so it never
hard-fails. It has been verified headlessly under Xvfb + lavapipe:
The default headless build, all tests, and
girder's demo require none of this — no GPU, display, or extra system libraries.
The default provider is a deterministic, offline MockProvider, so everything
runs with no network and no API key. OpenAI and Anthropic are implemented live
providers behind the live-providers feature. OpenAI uses the Responses API and
is selected when OPENAI_API_KEY is set:
Anthropic remains available as a second live provider:
The Router tries OpenAI first when configured, uses Anthropic as a secondary
live provider for planning/codegen, and falls back to the mock otherwise. Gemini,
xAI Grok, and local Ollama remain compile-clean extension-point structs; they
deliberately do not enter routing until their HTTP bodies are implemented.
Girder is a semantic-graph MCP server and CLI for coding agents. The native GUI, agent swarm, and time-travel debugger are supporting components; the measurements below describe the graph's current behavior and limits.
The checked
Core Trustworthiness Measurement
compares affected-test selection with isolated runtime execution. Its bounded
baseline measures both Rust and Python precision/recall at 1.000/1.000
(the earlier 0.667 Rust precision defect is closed). That is a result on
small fixtures, not a representative-repository superiority claim — and the
counter-evidence is checked in alongside it: on a real dependency, a
polymorphic-dispatch mutation measured recall 0.000
(docs/core-representative-mutations.md),
which is why test selection is documented as advisory rather than
authoritative.
Implemented features:
| Feature | What it does |
|---|---|
| Semantic graph | Nodes/edges, Rust alias/return/scoped-pattern/Cargo-entrypoint-aware and Python alias/nullable-annotation/constructor-aware cross-file call resolution, literal-aware macro calls, impact BFS, similarity edges, strict versioned .aether persistence and source reconciliation |
| Graph explorer | Retained force layout, pan/zoom, search and typed filters, neighborhood focus, LOD/culling, metadata inspection, source navigation |
| Agent swarm | Planner + Coder + Tester + Documenter + Refactorer + Optimizer + SecurityAuditor + QueryAgent |
| Intent-first planning | Planner reads the graph before planning; generates ordered FeatureSpec with Calls-edge wiring |
| Real Python tracer | sys.settrace execution recording, what-if branching via PyFrame_LocalsToFast |
| Knowledge-graph queries | Natural-language → concept / impact / callers / callees / explain / neighbourhood |
| Semantic review | Typed diff (added/modified/removed nodes + edges), impact radius, test gap report |
| Minimal test selection | Call-graph reachability from changed functions, optional --run |
| Graph collaboration | Deterministic operation-set CRDT, causal membership/deltas/tombstones, atomic RON/bincode bundles, roster-gated authenticated loopback host/join with optional downgrade-resistant pinned Ed25519 actor identities, private authenticated local discovery leases, all-member acknowledgement compaction, and reviewed whole-file source projection |
| Project contract | Validated girder.toml for source scope, graph path, test runners, and agent output |
| Source projection | GUI/CLI agent output and graph rename commit validated source plus graph through recoverable journaled transactions |
| Candidate validation | Disposable project copy, optional bubblewrap isolation, Cargo build/tests, configured checks, cancellation/timeouts, bounded diagnostics, snapshot-bound commit gate |
| DAP integration | Two-phase DAP launch, graph-node breakpoints, stop/stack inspection, and real debugpy coverage |
| Declarative extensions | AI/JSON recipe generation, exact digest-bound approval, parameterized capabilities, graph-native records/contributions, GUI/CLI lifecycle, reversible validated projections |
| Generative marketplace | Bounded portable catalogs, deterministic fingerprints/search, digest-bound reviews, project-aware regeneration, exact capability deltas, CLI and native browser |
| External authoring | girder context emits graph context plus a real Plan Format v2 schema for any external chat model; plan run --authored re-enforces rollback/impacted-test guarantees on the result |
Optional DAP adapter smoke test:
The measured table-stakes comparison, current correctness evidence, and
prioritized open risks are maintained in
docs/core-gap-analysis.md.
Paid access to impacted_tests costs $39, one-time and
perpetual, with no subscription. Buy a Girder license on
Gumroad.
Set the purchased key as the complete value of the GIRDER_LICENSE_KEY
environment variable. Alternatively, save it as the only contents of the key
file that Girder reads for your platform:
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/girder/license.key, or
$HOME/.config/girder/license.key when XDG_CONFIG_HOME is unset$HOME/Library/Application Support/girder/license.key%APPDATA%\girder\license.keyVerification is offline, and the key never expires.
Girder is source-available, not open source, under the Business Source License 1.1.
The free tier is genuinely free and permanent: it has no expiry and requires no
account. For a single repository it includes get_source, find_definition,
search_code, ask_codebase, review_changes, and orient. The
impacted_tests tool requires a paid license.
Licenses are signed keys verified locally by the Girder binary. The binary never phones home, makes no network call for licensing, and works fully offline in both tiers.
On September 4, 2030, the license converts to the Apache License, Version 2.0.
See LICENSE for the authoritative terms and
CONTRIBUTING.md for contribution terms.