ksrc

One‑liner search and read for Kotlin 3rd-party dependency sources for AI agents.

Your AI agents take ~10 steps just to see a single Kotlin function's signature in a third-party library. ksrc turns that into two commands and ~4x less tokens.

What it is

It's a CLI utility to enable efficient source code search for AI agents working with Kotlin.

Ever saw an AI agent find a function's signature in TypeScript/Python? Simple rg over node_modules and a sed call is all it needs to discover APIs and signatures.

With Kotlin/Gradle, agents have to take a 15-step journey to download, locate, unpack and ripgrep source jars. ksrc turns 16k tokens wasted on that into 2 CLI commands.

1. Install the tool

Start by installing the command itself.

Homebrew (macOS/Linux) - recommended, auto-updated:

brew tap respawn-app/tap
brew install ksrc

Standalone binaries via GitHub Releases:

Install script (macOS/Linux):

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/respawn-app/ksrc/main/scripts/install.sh | sh

Manual install:

Download the appropriate archive for your OS/arch from releases and place ksrc on your PATH.

2. Teach agents how to use it

Next up, install the claude code plugin/skill, to let your agents know they can use ksrc and how to use it.

Claude Code

Add the Respawn marketplace, then install the plugin:

/plugin marketplace add respawn-app/claude-plugin-marketplace
/plugin install ksrc@respawn-tools

Codex skill

Install from the public GitHub path:

$skill-installer install https://github.com/respawn-app/ksrc/tree/main/skills/ksrc

MCP (Model Context Protocol)

Use when your agent doesn't have bash tool. Configure your MCP client to spawn the stdio server:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "ksrc": {
      "command": "ksrc",
      "args": ["mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Default tools: search, cat, deps. Enable more via --tools=<list> (e.g., --tools=search,cat,deps,resolve or --tools=all).

You shouldn't need the skill if you use mcp, but if your agent has access to bash tool, prefer CLI+bash instead of the mcp.

AGENTS.md prompt

Avoid directly accessing .gradle; instead, proactively use ksrc bash tool to inspect source code of dependencies to learn API shapes or implementations. Start with ksrc --help.

Usage

Give this tool larger timeouts - it can take a minute to download sources (if needed) and resolve gradle projects.

1. Start by using ksrc search to get the file identifier and lines you need. Example:

$ ksrc search "updateState<"
pro.respawn.flowmvi:core:3.3.0-alpha03!/commonMain/pro/respawn/flowmvi/api/StateReceiver.kt 19:8: updateState<State.Subtype, _> { }

The tool returns found artifacts, versions, source sets, paths, and lines in a single common format that's chainable with other commands, rg-style.

If you want faster execution & less noise, specify:

• --artifact to limit search to one artifact, (or --module to also limit by version)
• --subproject to help discovery for monorepos/large modular apps
• --targets to limit to specific KMP targets.

2. When you have found the desired artifact, read the file contents:

$ ksrc cat 'pro.respawn.flowmvi:core:3.3.0-alpha03!/commonMain/pro/respawn/flowmvi/api/StateReceiver.kt' --lines 10,25

License

This program is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0.

See LICENSE.txt.

Copyright 2026 Respawn LLC

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0

Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the specific language governing permissions and limitations under the License.