DevDoc — Documentation MCP Service

A CLI tool that crawls documentation (websites or Git repositories), saves it as Markdown, and exposes it as an MCP (Model Context Protocol) server for local LLMs and AI agents.

---

What You Can Do

With DevDoc, you can:

1. Add public documentation from websites or Git repositories
2. Use a built-in knowledge base of common docs without looking up URLs yourself
3. Keep documentation cached locally for fast offline searching
4. Search docs from the terminal before connecting any MCP client
5. Run an MCP server for local AI tools over stdio
6. Run an HTTP/SSE MCP server for agents and remote tooling
7. Start the service in Docker with a single startup script
8. Update, inspect, and remove documentation sources at any time

---

Requirements

Tool	Notes
uv	Python package manager — installed automatically by the installers
Git	Only needed when adding git sources
pandoc (optional)	RST → Markdown conversion for Git repos; falls back to built-in converter

---

Installation

Linux / macOS / WSL

bash install.sh

The script:

1. Installs uv if missing
2. Runs uv tool install --python 3.13 . → creates the devdoc binary at ~/.local/bin/devdoc
3. Installs Playwright (Chromium) for crawl4ai web crawling
4. Updates ~/.bashrc / ~/.zshrc if ~/.local/bin is not yet in PATH

Windows (PowerShell)

Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process
.\install.ps1

The script:

1. Installs uv via the official Windows installer if missing
2. Runs uv tool install --python 3.13 . → creates devdoc.exe
3. Adds the uv tools directory to your user PATH
4. Installs Playwright (Chromium)

Manual (any platform)

uv tool install --python 3.13 /path/to/devdoc

---

Quick Start

Local CLI

# Add from the built-in knowledge base (no URL needed):
devdoc add godot
devdoc add roblox
devdoc add react

# OR supply a custom URL:
devdoc add godot https://github.com/godotengine/godot-docs.git
devdoc add mylib https://docs.example.com/

# Start the MCP server:
devdoc start

Docker

./start-docker.sh

This builds the image, starts the container, and exposes the SSE endpoint on http://localhost:8080/sse.

Use a different port if needed:

./start-docker.sh 9090

---

All Commands

Command Summary

Command	What it does
devdoc kb	Browse built-in documentation sources
devdoc add	Add and download a documentation source
devdoc list	List all configured sources
devdoc status	Show health and environment details
devdoc info	Inspect one source in detail
devdoc update	Refresh one or all sources
devdoc remove / devdoc rm	Delete a source
devdoc search	Search local docs from the terminal
devdoc start	Run the MCP server
devdoc stop	Stop the background SSE daemon
devdoc logs	View daemon logs
devdoc mcp-config	Print MCP client configuration
devdoc init-mcp	Attempt to configure supported MCP clients

devdoc kb [query] [-c category]

Browse the built-in knowledge base of curated public documentation sources.

devdoc kb                    # list all (~40 entries grouped by category)
devdoc kb godot              # search by keyword
devdoc kb -c gamedev         # filter by category
devdoc kb -c frontend
devdoc kb -c backend

Categories: gamedev, frontend, backend, language, graphics, mobile, desktop, testing, api, web

Built-in sources include:

Key	Name	Type
godot	Godot Engine	git
roblox	Roblox Studio	web
unity	Unity	web
unreal	Unreal Engine	web
bevy	Bevy (Rust)	web
pygame	Pygame	web
react	React	web
nextjs	Next.js	web
vue	Vue.js	git
nuxt	Nuxt	web
svelte	Svelte	web
astro	Astro	git
solidjs	SolidJS	web
tailwind	Tailwind CSS	web
htmx	HTMX	web
threejs	Three.js	web
pinia	Pinia	web
nodejs	Node.js	web
deno	Deno	git
bun	Bun	web
express	Express	web
fastapi	FastAPI	web
django	Django	web
laravel	Laravel	git
supabase	Supabase	web
prisma	Prisma	web
graphql	GraphQL	web
trpc	tRPC	web
typescript	TypeScript	web
python	Python	web
rust	Rust (book)	git
go	Go	web
kotlin	Kotlin	web
swift	Swift	web
elixir	Elixir	web
mdn	MDN Web Docs	web
flutter	Flutter	web
tauri	Tauri	web
electron	Electron	web
vitest	Vitest	web
pytest	pytest	web

---

devdoc add <name> [url]

Download and index a documentation source. URL is optional — if omitted, name is looked up in the knowledge base and fails with suggestions if not found.

# From knowledge base (recommended):
devdoc add godot
devdoc add roblox
devdoc add deno

# Custom URL (auto-detects git vs web):
devdoc add godot   https://github.com/godotengine/godot-docs.git
devdoc add mylib   https://docs.example.com/

# Options:
devdoc add <name> [url] --max-pages 200   # limit crawl size (default: 500)
devdoc add <name> [url] --delay 1.0       # seconds between requests (default: 0.5)
devdoc add <name> [url] --type web        # force source type

Downloaded files are stored in ~/.devdoc/docs/<name>/.

---

devdoc list

Show all configured sources with full details — type, document count, disk size, dates, and URL.

┏━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━┳━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
┃ Name   ┃ Type ┃ Docs ┃ Size  ┃ Added      ┃ Updated    ┃ URL           ┃
┡━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━╇━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━╇━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┩
│ godot  │ git  │ 1842 │ 18 MB │ 2025-03-01 │ 2025-03-01 │ github.com/…  │
└────────┴──────┴──────┴───────┴────────────┴────────────┴───────────────┘

---

devdoc status

Overall health check — binary path, config location, totals across all sources, and per-source state (including Git branch/commit for git sources).

devdoc status

---

devdoc info <name>

Detailed panel for a single source: metadata, file counts, disk size, Git branch + last commit, and top-level directory structure.

devdoc info godot

---

devdoc update [name]

Re-crawl (git pull / re-crawl website) to refresh documentation. Omit name to update all sources.

devdoc update          # update everything
devdoc update godot    # update one source

---

devdoc remove <name> / devdoc rm <name>

Delete a source from the config and remove all downloaded files.

devdoc remove godot
devdoc rm godot        # short alias
devdoc rm godot --yes  # skip confirmation prompt

---

devdoc search <query>

Search documentation locally — useful for testing without an MCP client.

devdoc search "signals and slots"
devdoc search "AnimationPlayer" -s godot   # limit to one source
devdoc search "coroutine" -n 5             # top 5 results

---

devdoc start

Start the MCP server. All configured sources are available as tools.

# stdio transport (default) — for Claude Desktop, LM Studio, etc.
devdoc start

# HTTP/SSE transport — for agents that connect via HTTP
devdoc start --transport sse --port 8080 --host 0.0.0.0

Docker startup

Build and start the Docker container with the included startup script:

./start-docker.sh

Use a different port by passing it as the first argument:

./start-docker.sh 9090

The script:

1. Builds the local Docker image
2. Starts the container in SSE mode
3. Maps the selected port to the same port in the container
4. Persists DevDoc data in the Docker volume devdoc-data

The container entrypoint uses PORT and defaults to 8080.

You can also override names with environment variables:

IMAGE_NAME=my-devdoc CONTAINER_NAME=my-devdoc DATA_VOLUME=my-devdoc-data ./start-docker.sh

Useful Docker commands:

docker ps
docker logs -f devdoc
docker stop devdoc
docker start devdoc
docker rm -f devdoc
docker volume ls

---

devdoc mcp-config

Print the JSON snippet to paste into your MCP client config (e.g. Claude Desktop claude_desktop_config.json).

devdoc mcp-config              # stdio (default)
devdoc mcp-config --transport sse --port 8080

Example output:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "devdoc": {
      "command": "/home/user/.local/bin/devdoc",
      "args": ["start"]
    }
  }
}

---

MCP Tools (available to connected LLMs/agents)

Tool	Description
list_sources	List all configured doc sources with counts
search_docs(query, source?)	Keyword search across all docs, returns top 10 with snippets
get_document(path)	Full content of a file (path from search results)
list_documents(source, path?)	Browse files in a source by sub-path

Example agent workflow

list_sources()
→ "godot (git) — 1842 docs"

search_docs("AnimationPlayer track methods")
→ 1. AnimationPlayer  classes/class_animationplayer.md
     …adds a new track to the animation…

get_document("godot/classes/class_animationplayer.md")
→ Full class reference

---

Typical Workflows

1. Add docs and search locally

devdoc add python
devdoc search "asyncio gather"

2. Add a custom documentation site

devdoc add mylib https://docs.example.com/
devdoc search "authentication token" -s mylib

3. Run for a desktop MCP client

devdoc start

Then generate client configuration:

devdoc mcp-config

4. Run as a networked SSE service

devdoc start --transport sse --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8080

5. Run in the background

devdoc start --transport sse --daemon
devdoc logs
devdoc stop

6. Run in Docker

./start-docker.sh
docker logs -f devdoc

---

Storage Layout

~/.devdoc/
├── sources.json            # source registry
└── docs/
    ├── godot/              # git clone or crawled pages
    │   ├── .git/
    │   ├── tutorials/
    │   ├── classes/
    │   │   ├── class_node.md
    │   │   └── …
    │   └── …
    └── python/
        └── …

---

Updating devdoc itself

# From the project directory:
uv tool install --reinstall --python 3.13 .

---

Notes

• stdio mode is intended for local MCP clients such as Claude Desktop or LM Studio.
• sse mode is intended for tools that connect over HTTP.
• Web crawling may require Playwright browser installation.
• Git sources work best when git is installed locally.
• Docker mode persists DevDoc data in a named Docker volume, so your source list and downloaded docs survive container replacement.

---

Troubleshooting

Problem	Fix
devdoc: command not found	export PATH="$HOME/.local/bin:$PATH" then restart shell
lxml build failed	Use --python 3.13 (pre-built wheels available)
Web crawl returns 0 pages	Run playwright install chromium manually
Git clone fails	Check git is installed and the URL is correct
RST files not converted	Install pandoc for best results; built-in fallback handles common cases