From code-explorer to codescout

TL;DR

• The project was renamed. The binary is now codescout, not code-explorer.
• Update your MCP config: change the server key from code-explorer to codescout.
• Update any scripts or aliases that call the old binary name.
• 9 tools were renamed and 3 consolidated — see the CHANGELOG for the full mapping.

The name

The original name was code-explorer. It made sense at the time — the tool helped an AI navigate a codebase the way a developer would explore it in an IDE.

Two things changed.

First, the practical one: code-explorer was already taken on crates.io. A Rust binary needs a crate name, and that one wasn’t available.

Second, the honest one: the name had stopped fitting. By the time the rename happened, the tool had grown persistent memory that survives across sessions, semantic search over embeddings, a shell integration with output buffering, a project dashboard, and LSP-backed navigation across 9 languages. It wasn’t just exploring files anymore. It was orienting an AI inside a codebase — tracking context, surfacing what matters, remembering what was learned.

Scout felt closer to that. A scout doesn’t just wander. It goes ahead, maps the terrain, and comes back with something useful.

What it grew into

The project started as file navigation. You could list symbols, search for patterns, read a function body without dumping the whole file into context.

Then it got LSP: real go-to-definition, hover types, find-all-references — the same signals a developer gets from their IDE, available to the AI.

Then semantic search: find code by concept, not just by text match. Then persistent memory: notes the AI can read back next session, carrying context forward. Then shell integration with output buffers, so large command output doesn’t blow the context window. Then a dashboard for project health.

Each addition was driven by a recurring friction — the AI doing something clumsy that a better tool could prevent. The scope kept expanding because the problem kept expanding.

Migrating from code-explorer

If you were running code-explorer before, here’s everything that changed at the API surface:

Update your .mcp.json (or Claude Code’s ~/.claude/settings.json) to use "codescout" as the server key. The core behavior is unchanged — it’s a rename, not a rewrite. Tool names were also tidied up alongside the rename; see What else changed below.

What else changed

Alongside the rename, the tool API was tidied up:

• 9 tools renamed for consistency — plural list_* for enumeration, find_* for search, search_* for text/semantic. Full mapping in the CHANGELOG.
• 3 tools consolidated — insert_before_symbol and insert_after_symbol merged into insert_code(position: "before"|"after"). is_onboarded folded into onboarding(force: true).