IntelliJ Styled Search

IntelliJ Styled Search adds an IntelliJ IDEA-like project search panel to VS Code. It opens as a movable overlay, streams workspace results, and shows an editable Monaco preview for the selected match.

Features

• Find in project from a movable IntelliJ-style overlay.
• Search the selected text directly from the editor context menu or keybinding.
• Preview matches in an embedded Monaco editor with installed VS Code TextMate grammars, immediate lexical hover, and VS Code semantic hover, completions, navigation, diagnostics, and semantic highlighting relayed into the bundled editor.
• Narrow large searches with a local trigram index, then verify results with ripgrep.
• Support literal, regex, case-sensitive, whole-word, and multi-line searches.
• Keep results responsive by streaming matches and showing candidate files while ripgrep is still running.

Commands

MCP Usage

This repository includes project MCP config files:

• .mcp.json for Claude Code project-scoped MCP discovery.
• .codex/config.toml for Codex project-scoped MCP configuration when supported by the installed Codex CLI.

The MCP clients spawn a stdio proxy, but the proxy still needs the VS Code extension's localhost endpoint. In trusted workspaces the extension auto-starts that endpoint by default. Each VS Code window binds an OS-assigned free port and writes the actual URL to .codeidx/mcp-server.json, so multiple projects can run at the same time without sharing a fixed port. The extension also writes .codeidx/codeidx-mcp-stdio.js, which lets project MCP configs launch the proxy through node without depending on a global codeidx-mcp binary. Auto-setup writes only project-local MCP config files such as .mcp.json and .codex/config.toml; it does not write ~/.codex/config.toml or any other user/global MCP config.

Manual stdio proxy command:

codeidx-mcp stdio --workspace .

From a workspace where the extension has started, use the generated project launcher:

node .codeidx/codeidx-mcp-stdio.js stdio --workspace .

The proxy discovers the VS Code endpoint from .codeidx/mcp-server.json and verifies that the endpoint reports the same workspace ID. A stale CODEIDX_MCP_URL from another VS Code window is ignored instead of pinning the proxy to the wrong project. If you disable intellijStyledSearch.mcpAutoStart, the extension still publishes a workspace-local control API in .codeidx/mcp-control.json; agents can call mcp_start from the stopped stdio fallback to ask that VS Code window to start the workspace MCP endpoint. You can also pass the URL explicitly:

codeidx-mcp stdio --url http://127.0.0.1:<port>/mcp

Codex should use the generated project-scoped .codex/config.toml when your Codex CLI supports it. Avoid codex mcp add for this launcher when it writes to ~/.codex/config.toml, because user/global MCP config can pin codeidx to one workspace. If a global entry is necessary, use a cwd-based command rather than a project-specific .codeidx/codeidx-mcp-stdio.js absolute path.

Claude Code example:

claude mcp add --transport stdio codeidx -- node .codeidx/codeidx-mcp-stdio.js stdio --workspace .

Claude Code also auto-detects the checked-in .mcp.json after you approve the project-scoped MCP server.

Useful MCP self-check tools:

• mcp_health: verifies the MCP connection and reports endpoint, discovery file, capabilities, index status, and the agent startup policy.
• mcp_start: when mcp_health reports health.mcp_connection == "stopped" and control.available == true, asks the VS Code extension control API to start this workspace's MCP endpoint.

Agents should initialize codeidx with mcp_health({ "include_agent_policy": true, "include_discovery": true }), then follow the policy returned in agent_policy. If health reports health.mcp_connection == "stopped" and the stopped stdio fallback advertises mcp_start, call mcp_start once, rediscover, then call mcp_health again before using search, symbol, reference, or graph tools. Unless higher-priority user or project policy such as AGENTS.md, CLAUDE.md, or direct user instructions says otherwise, agents should automatically use codeidx before broad grep or whole-file reads: use codeidx_probe/codeidx_exists for cardinality, codeidx_search_code with output_mode: "minimal" for path:line candidates, and only then expand selected ranges with codeidx_read_snippets or codeidx_symbol_slice. MCP intentionally does not expose index refresh/rebuild tools; if the index is not ready, a full scan is required, or final audit ordering matters, fall back to rg or ask the user to prepare the index.

Native OR search is available through queries; the engine unions per-term index candidates before verification, so this avoids broad regex alternation for simple keyword sets:

{
  "queries": ["AlphaService", "BetaService", "GammaService"],
  "query_kind": "literal",
  "query_operator": "any"
}

By default, codeidx_search_code protects common dependency/generated/sensitive paths such as node_modules/**, out/**, dist/**, graphql-codegen/**, and .env*. To deliberately search a normally excluded path, pass a narrow include plus an exclude policy override:

{
  "query": "SomeGeneratedSymbol",
  "include_globs": ["out/**/*.js"],
  "exclude_policy": "custom_only"
}

Use exclude_policy: "none" only when you intentionally want to ignore both default excludes and exclude_globs. Both override modes bypass intellijStyledSearch.excludeGlobs for that MCP request; keep include_globs narrow when searching dependency or generated trees. For generated/codegen searches, include_generated: true disables generated excludes and uses a bounded full scan with a larger MCP file-size cap so large generated files are not silently missed. If a generated/full-scan request explicitly forbids fallback, MCP returns fallback_policy_requires_full_scan instead of pretending the indexed search found zero results.

codeidx_search_code defaults to token-first output_mode: "minimal" and returns only path:line rows. Use output_mode: "rg_like" when you need line previews, and codeidx_read_snippets for selected ranges instead of paying snippet cost in the broad search response. Compact search diagnostics are opt-in for compact text calls: pass "include_diagnostics": true when you need engine/fallback/scope/timing metadata in structuredContent. Pass "structured": true or "output_mode": "structured" only for full JSON-rich search results. Pass "diagnostic_level": "full" only when you need full query terms and verbose ranking metadata. Scope presets are explicit: source means production plus tests while excluding migrations/generated/dependencies/local editor context, production excludes tests too, tests keeps only tests, and all disables those preset filters. For architectural inventories, codeidx_top_files supports group_by: "directory" plus directory_depth; this is useful for summarizing where notification implementations, senders, or callers are concentrated before reading files.

Example prompt for Codex or Claude:

Use the codeidx MCP mcp_health tool, then search for "UserService" with codeidx_search_symbols first and codeidx_search_code if text locations are needed.

Keybindings

Settings

Runtime Notes

On first activation, the extension attempts to install a platform-specific ripgrep binary into VS Code's extension global storage. If that install fails or the platform is unsupported, it falls back to VS Code's bundled ripgrep when available, and finally to the JavaScript search path.

Zoekt indexes are kept fresh with incremental updates for VS Code create/save/delete/rename operations plus external filesystem create/change/delete events. A search drains queued updates before querying the index; unsaved editor buffers are reported as dirty overlay state because they are not yet durable index input. Symbol search also filters deleted/missing-file results before returning them and queues a semantic incremental update when stale symbols are observed.

The tab-free bundled preview is the guaranteed path. It uses real file URIs, lazily reads the installed extensions' contributes.languages/contributes.grammars assets without activating those extensions, and relays VS Code language providers without opening an editor tab. TextMate grammar failures or safety-budget overruns fall back to Monaco's bundled tokenizer. When passive renderer capture is available, the preview may upgrade to VS Code's native editor services. Workspace language requests use the saved VS Code document snapshot, so a bundled preview pauses them while it has unsaved edits and resumes them after a successful save instead of showing stale ranges. If the overlay or preview fails to mount after a VS Code update, run IntelliJ Search: Reinject Renderer Patch (Recovery).

Development

npm install
npm run compile
npm test
npm run bench:zoekt -- --files 10000,50000,100000

npm run bench:zoekt saves a timestamped artifact plus latest.json under artifacts/benchmarks/zoekt/. The artifact includes the raw benchmark response, wall-clock runtime, git commit, Rust toolchain versions, and host metadata so repeated runs stay comparable.

Deployment

Deployment and release steps now live in DEPLOY.md.

Short version:

• vsce package builds a lightweight VSIX from the current .vscodeignore.
• Without a resources/bin/<platform-arch>/ tuple it relies on the global Cargo cache and a one-time local Rust build per Rust-source revision.
• Run npm run build:zoek-runtime before packaging a self-contained host-platform VSIX; use the explicit target options in DEPLOY.md for cross-platform artifacts.

Quick local package:

vsce package