npm/npx distribution of oss-search — fast local + federated OSS code search and repo discovery, exposing 7 MCP tools over stdio plus a byte-identical CLI.

This package contains no compiled code and has zero runtime dependencies. On first run, the oss-mcp shim downloads the prebuilt Rust binary for your platform from GitHub Releases, verifies it against the release's checksums.txt (when present), and caches it. Subsequent runs start instantly from the cache.

Requirements

Node.js >= 18 (only to bootstrap the binary)
macOS (x64, arm64) or Linux (x64, arm64)
A published release v<version> with assets named oss-search-<version>-<target>.tar.gz (containing the oss-mcp binary) and, optionally, checksums.txt

Run once

npx oss-search            # speaks MCP over stdio
npx oss-search --live     # enable remote backends (GitHub code search, grep.app, deps.dev, ...)

Install globally

npm install -g oss-search
oss-mcp

Use with an MCP client

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "oss-search": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["oss-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Or point directly at the cached binary (~/.cache/oss-search/bin/<version>-<target>/oss-mcp) to skip the Node shim entirely.

Cache

Binaries are cached at ~/.cache/oss-search/bin/<version>-<target>/oss-mcp. Override the location with the OSS_SEARCH_CACHE_DIR environment variable. Delete the cache to force a re-download.

For GITHUB_TOKEN-backed live search and other options, see the repository README.