Context Engine

Context Engine

Semantic code search, memory, and symbol intelligence for AI coding assistants.

Get your free account at dev.context-engine.ai

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Install Skills

Context Engine ships AI agent skills that teach your coding assistant how to use 30+ MCP tools for semantic search, symbol graph navigation, memory, and more.

Claude Code / Claude Desktop

Recommended: Install natively from the public GitHub repo:

# Add the marketplace (one-time)
/plugin marketplace add Context-Engine-AI/Context-Engine

# Install the skill
/plugin install context-engine

This pulls the skill directly from GitHub and auto-loads MCP tool guidance into your session.

Alternatively, copy the rules file manually:

cp -r skills/context-engine/ your-project/.claude/

Cursor

Context Engine rules are included in .cursorrules at the root of your workspace. Cursor picks this up automatically when the file is present.

# Copy to your project root
cp .cursorrules your-project/.cursorrules

Codex (OpenAI)

Recommended: Install natively using the built-in skill installer — just ask Codex:

"Install the context-engine skill from https://github.com/Context-Engine-AI/Context-Engine"

Codex will pull .codex/skills/context-engine/ (including SKILL.md and reference docs) into ~/.codex/skills/ automatically.

Or install manually:

cp -r .codex/skills/context-engine/ ~/.codex/skills/context-engine/

Windsurf

cp -r .codex/skills/ your-project/.codex/skills/

Augment Code

cp -r .augment/ your-project/.augment/

Gemini

cp GEMINI.md your-project/GEMINI.md

Any Other Assistant

The core skill file works with any AI assistant that supports custom instructions:

cp skills/context-engine/SKILL.md your-project/

Then tell your assistant: "Read SKILL.md for instructions on using Context Engine MCP tools."

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CLI Setup (No VS Code)

If you use Claude Code, Codex, or another terminal-based MCP client, install the MCP bridge to connect your codebase to Context Engine without VS Code:

npm install -g @context-engine-bridge/context-engine-mcp-bridge

Quick start

# Authenticate, index your codebase, and start watching for changes
ctxce connect <your-api-key> --workspace /path/to/repo

# Run as a background daemon (recommended)
ctxce connect <your-api-key> --workspace /path/to/repo --daemon

Daemon management

ctxce status          # Check if the daemon is running
ctxce stop            # Stop the background daemon

Connect flags

Flag	Alias	Description
--workspace	-w	Workspace root (default: cwd)
--daemon	-d, --bg	Run as background daemon
--interval <sec>		File watch interval in seconds (default: 30)
--no-watch	--once	Index once, don't watch for changes
--skip-index	--auth-only	Authenticate only, skip initial index

Wire up the MCP server

Once connected, point your MCP client at the bridge:

# stdio mode (for Claude Code, Codex, etc.)
ctxce mcp-serve --workspace /path/to/repo

# HTTP mode (for clients that speak HTTP)
ctxce mcp-http-serve --workspace /path/to/repo --port 30810

The daemon and MCP server share auth via ~/.ctxce/auth.json. Logs are at ~/.context-engine/daemon.log.