# ref-tools/ref-tools-mcp

Helping coding agents never make mistakes working with public or private libraries without wasting the context window.

Repository: https://github.com/ref-tools/ref-tools-mcp
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/ref-tools-mcp
Homepage: http://ref.tools
Language: TypeScript
License: MIT
License Family: permissive
Topics: coding-agent, documentation-tool, mcp, mcp-server
Last push: 2026-06-26T22:26:07+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 59/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 89, release rhythm 35, longevity 35
- inputs: {"age_days": 498, "days_push": 68, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_releases
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1156, forks 68 (observed 2026-08-28T04:03:48.014255+00:00)

## What it is
Ref MCP is a Model Context Protocol server that gives AI coding agents fast, token-efficient access to documentation for public and private APIs, services, and libraries. It uses agentic search with session-aware filtering and relevance-based page section extraction to minimize context window usage.

## Use cases
- let my coding agent look up library documentation without wasting context tokens
- search API docs from Claude Code or another MCP-compatible agent
- avoid context rot when an agent reads long documentation pages
- give an LLM agent up-to-date docs for private internal libraries
- reduce repeated search results across an agent's session
- fetch only the relevant sections of a documentation page

## When to choose
- you use MCP-compatible coding agents like Claude Code and want accurate, current library documentation
- context window usage from documentation lookups is a problem
- you need documentation access for both public and private libraries

## When to avoid
- your agent does not support the Model Context Protocol
- you need general web search rather than documentation-focused retrieval
- you want a fully offline or self-hosted documentation solution

## Facets
- artifact type: service
- maturity: active
- function: search-engine, documentation, mcp, rag, developer-tools
- domain: developer-tools, documentation, large-language-models
- platform: cli
- tags: mcp-server, coding-agent, documentation-search, token-efficient, context-management, ai-agents, nodejs, typescript, mcp

## Member repositories
- ref-tools/ref-tools-mcp (main) score 59

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:03:48.014255+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T06:32:09.163512+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/ref-tools/ref-tools-mcp (fetched 2026-08-28T04:03:48.014255+00:00, sha f83c13c3c5f6)
  - homepage: http://ref.tools (fetched 2026-08-29T12:37:37.524642+00:00, sha ab501307141c)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.