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Lien

LienLocal-First Code Intelligence for AI

Structural analysis + fast lexical search that give AI agents deep understanding of your codebase. 100% local, 100% private.

Get Started

View on GitHub

🔍

Impact Analysis

Reverse dependencies and blast radius before you refactor. "What breaks if I change this?" answered with a risk level.

📊

Complexity Analysis

Identify tech debt hotspots with cyclomatic, cognitive, and Halstead metrics. Prioritize refactoring and track code health over time.

🧪

Test Associations

Know which tests cover a file before you touch it, via naming convention and import analysis across 12+ frameworks.

🚀

Lexical Code Search

Fast full-text (FTS5/BM25) keyword search over code, docstrings, and identifier-split symbol names. No embeddings, no model download.

🔒

100% Local & Private

Code never leaves your machine for indexing or search, with no external API calls or telemetry. (Fetching the published package itself, via npm or npx, is the one network step.)

🎯

MCP Integration

Works with Cursor, Claude Code, and other MCP-compatible AI coding assistants via the Model Context Protocol.

Quick Start

Claude Code (recommended): one-time plugin install

text

/plugin marketplace add getlien/lien
/plugin install lien

That's it. Lien's MCP tools and the Explore agent are available in every Claude Code session, in every repo, with no per-project setup. First use in a new git repo triggers a one-time index automatically. See the Claude Code plugin guide for what its hooks do beyond the MCP config.

Other editors (Cursor, Windsurf, OpenCode, Kilo Code, Antigravity)

1. Install Lien:

bash

npm install -g @liendev/lien

2. Configure your editor:

bash

lien init

This writes the correct MCP config for your editor.

3. Restart your editor and start asking questions about your codebase!

Lien auto-detects your project structure and indexes on first use.

How It Works

Lien parses your code with Tree-sitter into a local SQLite database, then answers structural questions ("what depends on this?", "how complex is this?") with indexed SQL, and handles discovery with FTS5/BM25 lexical search. See How It Works for the full pipeline.

Use Cases

Impact analysis before a refactor, tech-debt hotspots, test coverage lookups, and keyword-based code discovery. See Use Cases in the guide for examples.

Privacy First

Your code stays on your machine during indexing and search: no external API calls, no telemetry. The one network step is fetching the published npm package itself (via npm install or the Claude Code plugin's npx) on first setup. See How It Works for details.

Free & Open Source

Lien is licensed under AGPL-3.0 and free forever for local use. Questions about licensing? Contact alf@lien.dev

Lien /ljɛ̃/: French for "link"

LienLocal-First Code Intelligence for AI

Impact Analysis

Complexity Analysis

Test Associations

Lexical Code Search

100% Local & Private

MCP Integration

Quick Start ​

Claude Code (recommended): one-time plugin install ​

Other editors (Cursor, Windsurf, OpenCode, Kilo Code, Antigravity) ​

How It Works ​

Use Cases ​

Privacy First ​

Free & Open Source ​