A persistent, multi-agent Model Context Protocol (MCP) server. Continuum gives AI coding agents — Claude Code, OpenCode, Codex, Gemini CLI — a shared, live view of a codebase and a memory that survives across agents and sessions.
Why
Standard MCP servers are spawned per-agent over stdio and forget everything when the agent exits. Continuum runs a single long-lived daemon per workspace: agents come and go, but the code graph and the inter-agent memory persist. One agent can hand off architectural intent to the next without re-deriving context.
Features
- Live code graph — tree-sitter parsing of Rust, Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, Go, PHP and Lua, kept in sync by a filesystem watcher.
- Hybrid code search —
search_codefuses lexical BM25 ranking with semantic embeddings (a local, pure-Rust model2vec model) via reciprocal rank fusion. One compact row per hit — a token-efficient replacement for grep. - Code navigation — file outlines, symbol definitions, caller lookup, and local dependency graphs, served from the in-memory code graph.
- Cross-agent memory — architectural decisions, an action-history log of agent intents, and an append-only scratchpad for handoffs.
- Daemon + thin adapter — one stateful daemon per workspace; each agent runs a lightweight stdio↔TCP proxy that auto-spawns the daemon on demand.
Architecture
AI agent ──stdio(MCP)──> continuum-adapter ──TCP loopback──> continuum-daemon
(thin proxy) (graph + memory)
The daemon holds the AST knowledge graph in memory and persists agent memory to a local SQLite database. Adapters are stateless. See DESIGN.md for the full design.
Installation
Quick start — npx
No build step. Point any MCP-capable agent at:
{
"command": "npx",
"args": ["-y", "continuum-mcp"]
}
The package downloads the prebuilt binaries for your platform on first use — Linux x64, macOS x64/arm64, and Windows x64 are supported.
Prebuilt binaries
Download continuum-daemon and continuum-adapter for your platform from the
latest release and keep them in
the same directory.
From source
With a recent stable Rust toolchain, from a checkout of this repository:
sh scripts/install.sh # Linux / macOS
powershell scripts/install.ps1 # Windows
The script builds and installs continuum-adapter and continuum-daemon into
~/.cargo/bin — no registry or account involved. By hand it is just:
cargo install --path crates/continuum-adapter
cargo install --path crates/continuum-daemon
Or run cargo build --release and use the binaries from target/release/.
Semantic search lazily downloads a ~30 MB embedding model from HuggingFace on
the first search_code call; until then, and if loading fails, search uses
lexical-only ranking and everything else works unchanged.
Windows without Visual Studio: with no MSVC linker, build against the llvm-mingw toolchain —
rustup target add x86_64-pc-windows-gnullvmand add a.cargo/config.tomlselecting that target.
Connecting an agent
Continuum speaks MCP over stdio. The simplest setup is the npx command above;
to use a built binary instead, point the agent at continuum-adapter:
{
"command": "/absolute/path/to/continuum-adapter",
"args": []
}
Either way the adapter auto-spawns the per-workspace daemon and treats the
current working directory as the workspace root (or pass --workspace <path>).
Per-agent configuration — Claude Code, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI, and OpenCode — is in docs/agent-setup.md.
Self-install (for AI agents)
If you are an AI coding agent with shell access, you can install Continuum and register it with your own MCP host. Follow the three steps.
1 — Install the binaries
With a Rust toolchain — one command, nothing to clone:
cargo install --git https://github.com/redstone-md/Continuum continuum-adapter continuum-daemon
This places continuum-adapter and continuum-daemon on your PATH
(in ~/.cargo/bin). Without Rust, skip this step and use npx in step 2 — it
fetches prebuilt binaries on first run.
2 — Register the MCP server with your host
Run the line for your host. If you skipped step 1, replace the command
continuum-adapter with npx and arguments -y continuum-mcp.
- Claude Code —
claude mcp add continuum -- continuum-adapter - Codex CLI —
codex mcp add continuum --transport stdio --command continuum-adapter - Gemini CLI — add to
~/.gemini/settings.json:{ "mcpServers": { "continuum": { "command": "continuum-adapter", "args": [] } } } - OpenCode — add to
opencode.json:{ "mcp": { "continuum": { "type": "local", "command": ["continuum-adapter"], "enabled": true } } }
3 — Reload and verify
Restart the MCP host or reload its servers, then call the get_stats tool — a
JSON reply means Continuum is live. The first search_code call downloads a
~30 MB embedding model; until it finishes, search is lexical-only and everything
else works.
Continuum is a local developer tool: nothing to commit, no secrets, one daemon per workspace that idles out after 30 minutes.
Configuration
Continuum reads its settings from the environment, so they propagate through the agent → adapter → daemon spawn chain. All are optional.
MCP tools
Project layout
crates/
continuum-core shared domain types, DTOs, protocol
continuum-transport JSON-RPC + MCP wire types, IPC framing, stdio proxy
continuum-graph in-memory code knowledge graph
continuum-indexer tree-sitter parsing + filesystem watcher
continuum-memory SQLite-backed agent memory
continuum-search semantic search — embeddings + in-memory vector index
continuum-daemon the workspace daemon (binary)
continuum-adapter the thin MCP adapter (binary)
License
MIT.
