reference

Documentation / Reference

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Reference

Quick reference documentation for Codanna.

In This Section

• MCP Protocol - Complete MCP tool specifications
• Exit Codes - CLI exit codes reference

Quick Reference

Common Flags

• --config, -c: Path to custom settings.toml file
• --force, -f: Force operation (overwrite, re-index, etc.)
• --progress, -p: Show progress during operations
• --threads, -t: Number of threads to use
• --dry-run: Show what would happen without executing
• --json: Structured output for piping (exit code 3 when not found)

MCP Tool Parameters

Tool	Parameters
find_symbol	name (required)
search_symbols	query, limit, kind, module
semantic_search_docs	query, limit, threshold, lang
semantic_search_with_context	query, limit, threshold, lang
get_calls	function_name OR symbol_id (one required)
find_callers	function_name OR symbol_id (one required)
analyze_impact	symbol_name OR symbol_id (one required), max_depth
get_index_info	None

Using symbol_id:

• All tools return [symbol_id:123] for unambiguous lookup
• Use symbol_id:ID instead of name for precise queries
• Example: codanna mcp get_calls symbol_id:1883

Language Filtering

Semantic search tools support language filtering to reduce noise in mixed-language projects:

# Search only in Rust code
codanna mcp semantic_search_docs query:"authentication" lang:rust limit:5

# Search only in TypeScript code
codanna mcp semantic_search_with_context query:"parse config" lang:typescript limit:3

Language filtering eliminates duplicate results when similar documentation exists across multiple languages, reducing result sets by up to 75% while maintaining identical similarity scores.

Current Limitations

• Supports Rust, Python, TypeScript, Go, PHP, C, and C++ (more language support coming)
• Semantic search requires English documentation/comments
• Windows support is experimental

Requirements

• Rust 1.75+ (for development)
• ~150MB for model storage (downloaded on first use)
• A few MB for index storage (varies by codebase size)

Next Steps

• Check the User Guide for usage
• Explore Advanced features
• See Architecture for technical details

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