Dekko

dekko is a fast, offline, dependency-free static code map generator and codebase indexer for LLM coding agents. It scans a repository with tree-sitter (no model tokens spent parsing) and writes:

• MAP.md — a human-readable map: a per-directory overview, an

embedded architecture diagram, load-bearing/orchestrator rankings, then every file's functions/methods with signatures, doc lines, and who calls and is called by whom.

• map.json — the same graph in machine-readable form.

On top of the map, dekko gives an agent a token-cheap way to answer questions like "what does this file contain," "who calls this function," and "what do I need to safely change this" — without reading whole files. It ships as a CLI, a Claude Code /map plugin + MCP server (Model Context Protocol), and works with Cline too.

Why dekko?

Most agent workflows gather context by reading whole files or grepping across a repo — expensive, and it throws away structure (who calls what, what a function's fan-in/fan-out looks like). dekko instead parses the repo once into a call graph and answers targeted questions against it. Measured across 7 real, unmodified open-source repos (Go, TypeScript, Java, Rust, Python/C++ — up to 14k files), dekko's structured queries used 3x–200x fewer tokens than the equivalent Read/Grep workflow for the same task (repo orientation, outlining a large file, tracing a symbol's callers/callees).

| Task | Example repo (scale) | dekko | Read/Grep | Savings | |---|---|---:|---:|---:| | Repo orientation (summary) | awesome-go (10 files) | 308 tok | ~15,271 tok | ~50x | | Repo orientation (summary) | cline (2,730 files) | 1,202 tok | ~4,020 tok | ~3.3x | | Outline a large file | claude-code main.tsx (4,683 lines) | 1,017 tok | 200,981 tok | ~197x | | Outline a large file | zed editor.rs (12,554 lines) | 1,996 tok | 115,109 tok | ~58x | | Symbol lookup (query_symbol + callers/callees) | tensorflow Graph class | ~811 tok | 61,656 tok | ~76x | | Symbol lookup (query_symbol + callers/callees) | spring-boot prepareContext | 759 tok | ~18,460 tok | ~24x | | Bundled context (workset) | zed | 2,984 tok | ~5,903+ tok (targeted) / ~164,571 tok (whole file) | ~2x / ~55x | | Bundled context (workset) | awesome-go | 617 tok | ~6,136 tok | ~10x |

dekko's cost stays roughly flat per query while Read/Grep scales with file/repo size, so the ratio grows with scale. The win isn't universal — small, self-contained files and already-grep-friendly local symbols see little to no benefit, and a few cases in the raw data are void because the cheap answer was also an incomplete one. See [benchmarks/real-world-repos/](benchmarks/real-world-repos/README.md) for the full per-task breakdown, methodology, and correctness caveats.

Compared to tag-index tools like ctags/gtags, dekko resolves actual call edges (not just definitions), ranks files by load-bearing-ness, and speaks directly to agents over MCP or the CLI — no editor plugin required.

Install

uv tool install dekko      # or: pip install dekko / pipx install dekko
dekko --claude-install     # add the /map command + MCP server to Claude Code, then restart

Extras (dekko[all] for ~55 more languages, dekko[search] for embedding search), installing from a local clone, and uninstalling are in [docs/install.md](docs/install.md).

Quick start

cd my-project
dekko map                  # writes .dekko/MAP.md + .dekko/map.json
dekko summary               # ~40-line digest: dirs, hotspots, entry points

.dekko/ is git-ignored by default; the map regenerates on demand, so you rarely need to run dekko map again by hand.

Documentation

• [docs/install.md](docs/install.md) — installation, extras, local

clone, uninstall

• [docs/cli.md](docs/cli.md) — every CLI command, symbol targets,

excluding files, notes, daemon mode, language support

• [docs/claude-code.md](docs/claude-code.md) — the /map plugin, push

hooks, Claude Code skills, the MCP server, and Cline

Learn more

• [CHANGELOG.md](CHANGELOG.md) — per-version history
• [CONTRIBUTING.md](CONTRIBUTING.md) — dev setup, testing, releasing
• [benchmarks/](benchmarks/) — token-efficiency measurements, including

a 7-repo real-world comparison against a plain Read/Grep workflow

Source & license

This open-source MCP server is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: aahlijia
• Source: aahlijia/dekko
• License: MIT
• Homepage: https://pypi.org/project/dekko/

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.