Index

Index Skill

Build the symbol index. Run once before using fetch or search, and re-run when code changes significantly.

Pre-flight

# Check config exists
cat .claude/codemunch/config.json 2>/dev/null || echo "NOT_CONFIGURED"
# If missing, run detect-lsp skill first

# Create index directory
mkdir -p .claude/codemunch

# Add to gitignore
grep -q ".claude/codemunch" .gitignore 2>/dev/null || echo ".claude/codemunch" >> .gitignore

---

Engine A — LSP Indexing (primary, when available)

LSP doesn't have a batch "index all files" API, but we can use it for on-demand precise symbol lookup. For the index build, use textDocument/documentSymbol on each file.

For each source file in the project:

# Get list of source files (respects .gitignore)
rg --files --type [lang] 2>/dev/null || \
  find . -name "*.[ext]" \
    -not -path "*/node_modules/*" \
    -not -path "*/.git/*" \
    -not -path "*/target/*" \
    -not -path "*/__pycache__/*" \
    -not -path "*/.claude/codemunch/*"

Use Claude Code's built-in LSP tool (/lsp) to call textDocument/documentSymbol for each file. This returns all symbols with:

• Name
• Kind (function, class, method, variable, constant, etc.)
• Range (start line, end line)
• Detail (type signature for typed languages)

Filter noise kinds: Skip noise kinds: constant, property, variable, enumerator. These inflate the index 15x without adding useful navigation value. Only keep symbols where kind is one of: function, method, class, interface, type, enum, namespace.

Store each kept symbol as:

{
  "name": "validateToken",
  "kind": "function",
  "file": "src/auth/tokens.ts",
  "start_line": 142,
  "end_line": 163,
  "signature": "validateToken(token: string): Promise",
  "container": "AuthService"
}

---

Engine B — ctags Indexing (fallback)

When LSP is unavailable for a language:

# Universal ctags — generates precise symbol table
universal-ctags \
  --recurse \
  --output-format=json \
  --fields=+n+e+K+S \
  --extras=+q \
  --exclude=node_modules \
  --exclude=.git \
  --exclude=target \
  --exclude=__pycache__ \
  --exclude=.claude/codemunch \
  --languages=[detected_languages] \
  -f .claude/codemunch/ctags.json \
  . 2>/dev/null

# Parse ctags output into codemunch index format
# ctags JSON fields: name, path, pattern, kind, line, end, signature
# Filter: skip noise kinds (constant, property, variable, enumerator)
# Only keep: function, method, class, interface, type, enum, namespace

ctags supports 40+ languages natively: ActionScript, Ada, Ant, Bash, C, C++, C#, Clojure, CoffeeScript, D, Elixir, Erlang, Fortran, Go, Groovy, Haskell, HTML, Java, JavaScript, JSON, Julia, Kotlin, Lisp, Lua, Make, Matlab, ObjectiveC, OCaml, Perl, PHP, PowerShell, Python, R, Rake, Ruby, Rust, Scala, Scheme, Shell, SQL, Swift, Tcl, TypeScript, Verilog, VHDL, Vim, YAML, Zig

# Verify ctags found symbols
wc -l .claude/codemunch/ctags.json

---

Engine C — Ripgrep Pattern Indexing (last resort)

When neither LSP nor ctags is available. Uses language-aware regex patterns to find symbol declarations:

# TypeScript/JavaScript
rg --json "^(export\s+)?(async\s+)?function\s+(\w+)|^(export\s+)?(abstract\s+)?class\s+(\w+)|^\s+(async\s+)?(\w+)\s*\([^)]*\)\s*[:{]" \
  --type ts --type js \
  --glob "!node_modules" \
  --glob "!.git" \
  > .claude/codemunch/rg-ts.jsonl

# Python
rg --json "^(async\s+)?def\s+(\w+)|^class\s+(\w+)" \
  --type py \
  > .claude/codemunch/rg-py.jsonl

# Go
rg --json "^func\s+(\(.*?\)\s+)?(\w+)|^type\s+(\w+)\s+(struct|interface)" \
  --type go \
  > .claude/codemunch/rg-go.jsonl

# Rust
rg --json "^(pub(\(.*?\))?\s+)?(async\s+)?fn\s+(\w+)|^(pub(\(.*?\))?\s+)?(struct|enum|trait|impl)\s+(\w+)" \
  --type rust \
  > .claude/codemunch/rg-rs.jsonl

# Ruby
rg --json "^\s*(def\s+(\w+)|class\s+(\w+)|module\s+(\w+))" \
  --type ruby \
  > .claude/codemunch/rg-rb.jsonl

# Java/Kotlin
rg --json "(public|private|protected|internal)?\s*(static\s+)?\w+\s+(\w+)\s*\(" \
  --type java --type kotlin \
  > .claude/codemunch/rg-jvm.jsonl

# C/C++
rg --json "^\w[\w\s\*]+\s+(\w+)\s*\([^;]*\)\s*\{|^(class|struct|enum)\s+(\w+)" \
  --type c --type cpp \
  > .claude/codemunch/rg-c.jsonl

# PHP
rg --json "^(public|private|protected)?\s*(static\s+)?function\s+(\w+)|^class\s+(\w+)" \
  --type php \
  > .claude/codemunch/rg-php.jsonl

Filter noise kinds: Skip noise kinds: constant, property, variable, enumerator. These inflate the index 15x without adding useful navigation value. The rg patterns should only match function/class/interface/type declarations, not const/let/var assignments unless they are arrow functions. Only keep: function, method, class, interface, type, enum, namespace.

Parse the ripgrep JSONL output to extract symbol name, file, and line number. End line is estimated as start + average function length (20 lines) — this is the only imprecise step. LSP and ctags give exact end lines.

---

Step: Build unified index

Merge results from whichever engines ran into a single .claude/codemunch/index.json:

{
  "version": "2.0",
  "generated": "2026-03-11T02:14:00Z",
  "engine": "lsp|ctags|rg",
  "project_root": "/path/to/project",
  "stats": {
    "total_symbols": 1247,
    "files_indexed": 89,
    "languages": ["typescript", "python", "go"]
  },
  "file_hashes": {
    "src/auth/tokens.ts": "a3f2b1c",
    "src/lib/validation.ts": "e7d4f9a",
    "convex/expenses.ts": "b1c3d5e"
  },
  "symbols": [
    {
      "name": "validateToken",
      "kind": "function",
      "file": "src/auth/tokens.ts",
      "start_line": 142,
      "end_line": 163,
      "signature": "validateToken(token: string): Promise",
      "container": "AuthService",
      "engine": "lsp"
    }
  ]
}

The file_hashes field maps each indexed file to its git blob hash (git hash-object ). This enables incremental re-indexing — only files whose hash changed need to be re-processed.

# Generate file hashes for all indexed files
for file in $(rg --files --type [lang]); do
  echo "\"$file\": \"$(git hash-object "$file" 2>/dev/null || md5 -q "$file")\""
done

Also build a fast name-lookup dictionary:

{
  "validateToken": [0],
  "AuthService": [1, 5, 23],
  "getUserById": [2]
}

(values are indexes into the symbols array)

Incremental mode

When called with a list of changed files (from the staleness-gate skill), only re-index those files:

1. Remove all symbols where symbol.file is in the changed file list
2. Run the engine pipeline (LSP → ctags → rg) on only the changed files
3. Append new symbols to the existing index
4. Update file_hashes for the changed files
5. Remove entries from file_hashes for deleted files
6. Update generated timestamp and stats

This is much faster than a full re-index for typical edits (1-5 files changed).

If more than 50 files have changed, fall back to a full re-index — it's faster than incremental at that scale.

---

Report

✅ codemunch index built

  Files indexed:    89
  Symbols found:    1,247
  Engine used:      LSP (TypeScript), ctags (Python, Go), rg (Bash)
  Index size:       142 KB
  Index written to: .claude/codemunch/index.json

  Top files by symbol count:
    src/api/invoices.ts      — 34 symbols
    src/lib/auth.ts          — 28 symbols
    convex/schema.ts         — 19 symbols

Run /codemunch:find  to look up any symbol.

Source & license

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

• Author: benmarte
• Source: benmarte/codemunch
• License: MIT

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