For Claude Desktop users

Claude Desktop can’t see your repo. Give it one.

Claude Desktop is where many people ask about code they are not editing right now: reviews, onboarding, incident calls. Maguyva indexes the repo and serves it over MCP, so the answers cite files and lines instead of memory.

Start free Read the Claude Desktop setup

Free tier: 3 repos, 50K indexed lines, no card.

No checkout needed. Ask the index.

What Claude Desktop needs to know

Four facts specific to Claude Desktop.

// config file

claude_desktop_config.json

Settings → Developer → Edit Config opens it. On macOS it lives in ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/; on Windows, in %APPDATA%\Claude\.

// transport

The local bridge

This file starts local processes, so this guide runs @maguyva/mcp through npx. Node.js must be installed.

// key

An env entry

The bridge reads MAGUYVA_API_KEY from the server’s env block in the same file.

// restart

Quit, then reopen

Claude Desktop reads the file at launch. Quit the app completely after editing it; the server starts on the next launch.

Project instructions set the brief. Use them.

Claude Projects hold instructions and files that every chat in the project starts with. They are the right place for:

Who the answers are for: a reviewer, a new hire, an on-call engineer.
House style for explanations and summaries.
A few documents you want quoted, like an architecture overview.

Uploaded files are a snapshot. The repo moved on the day after you uploaded them.

Where pasted code runs out

Three ways a chat about code goes wrong without the code.

// pasted snippets go stale

A file pasted into the chat last week describes last week’s code. Claude answers confidently from the version it was given.

// the snippet isn’t the system

One file rarely answers “what happens when this fails?” The handler, the retry, and the alert usually live in three different packages.

// no checkout, no grep

Claude Desktop has no working copy of your repo. Without a tool, every answer about structure depends on what you remembered to paste.

Maguyva as an MCP server in Claude Desktop

One mcpServers entry gives Claude:

11 tools over your indexed repo semantic, structural (AST), graph, and text search, plus symbol lookup, dependents, and file retrieval.
Answers with file paths and line numbers across 285+ languages, so you can check every claim.
Branch-aware results so Claude answers about the branch you name, not a file someone uploaded last month.

Project instructions tell Claude how to answer.
Maguyva gives Claude the code to answer from.

Two workflows

Questions you would otherwise answer by opening an IDE.

// workflow 01

Explain a code path during a review

claude> what happens after a payment webhook fails its signature check?

semantic_search("webhook signature verification failure")
  src/payments/webhooks.ts:64   verifySignature()
  src/payments/webhooks.ts:91   rejectAndAlert()

→ Claude answers with both lines cited.
[exit 0]

Every step of the answer points at a file and a line you can open.

// workflow 02

Size a change before you plan it

claude> how many places read the legacy plan_code field?

text_pattern_search("plan_code")
  14 matches in 9 files
dependency_search("getPlanCode", dependents)
  6 callers

→ The estimate starts from a count, not a guess.
[exit 0]

Useful in a planning meeting, when nobody has the repo open.

Setup in Claude Desktop

Three steps. Free tier: 3 repos, 50K indexed lines, no card.

// step 01

Index a repo at maguyva.ai

Pick one you already know, so you can grade the answers.

// step 02

Add Maguyva to claude_desktop_config.json

claude_desktop_config.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "maguyva": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "@maguyva/mcp"
      ],
      "env": {
        "MAGUYVA_API_KEY": "mgv_xxxx"
      }
    }
  }
}

// step 03

Replace the placeholder, restart, and ask one question

Swap mgv_xxxx for your API key, quit Claude Desktop completely, and reopen it. If the server does not appear, read mcp-server-maguyva.log in Claude’s logs folder (~/Library/Logs/Claude on macOS).