Arbor

Graph-native intelligence for codebases.

Know what breaks before you break it.

Table of Contents

• The Arbor Philosophy
• Why Arbor
• What you get
• Visual tour
• Quickstart
• Installation options
• MCP integration
• Language support
• Architecture and docs
• Git-aware CI workflows
• Release channels
• Contributing
• Contributors
• Security
• License

The Arbor Philosophy

Arbor is rooted in three unwavering principles, listed in strict order of priority. Every architectural decision is measured against this hierarchy:

1. Consumer First: Tooling must be beautiful, intuitive, and instantly useful out of the box. The developer experience triumphs over all other metrics.
2. Accessibility Second: Deep AI intelligence and graph analysis should never be gatekept. Our tooling is built to work seamlessly across language ecosystems and run deterministically on any machine.
3. Affordability Next: We ruthlessly optimize for minimal computational overhead. From edge laptops to giant monoliths, graph exploration should have zero-friction adoption.

For comprehensive details on our approach, read our PHILOSOPHY.md.

Why Arbor

Most AI code tooling treats code as text retrieval.

Arbor builds a semantic dependency graph and answers execution-aware questions:

• If I change this symbol, what breaks?
• Who calls this function, directly and transitively?
• What is the shortest architectural path between these two nodes?

You get deterministic, explainable impact analysis instead of approximate keyword matches.

What you get

• Blast radius analysis: See exactly which files and modules will be affected by a change (complete with depth confidence levels) before you ever press save.
• Graph-backed symbol resolution: Accurately tracks dependencies across files and entire language boundaries automatically.
• Agent-native MCP (v2.1.0): 10 MCP tools — surgical traversal (get_callers, get_callees, list_entry_points, search_symbols, get_file_graph, get_node_detail) plus broad analysis tools, all returning a suggested_next_tool hint for zero-reprompt agent chaining.
• Unified Tooling (CLI + GUI + MCP): Native desktop GUI, a blazing fast CLI, and Claude/AI Model Context Protocol integration all utilizing the exact same core analytical reasoning engine.
• Git-aware risk gating: Block pull-requests automatically in your CI/CD if a PR introduces a dangerously high architectural blast radius.
• Lightning fast incremental indexing: Sub-second background cache updates instantly tracking your code edits in real-time.

Visual tour

For a full-screen recording of the workflow, see media/recording-2026-01-13.mp4.

Quickstart

# 1) Install the Arbor CLI globally via Cargo
cargo install arbor-graph-cli

# 2) Initialize Arbor and build the dependency graph for your codebase
cd your-project
arbor setup

# 3) See EVERYTHING a function touches before you break it
arbor refactor <symbol-name>

# 4) Run safety checks (Great for CI/CD or before committing)
arbor diff  # See what your uncommitted git changes impact
arbor check --max-blast-radius 30  # Fail the checks if your changes break more than 30 nodes

# 5) Launch the visual interface to intuitively explore your code's architecture
arbor gui

Installation options

Use whichever channel fits your environment:

# Rust / Cargo
cargo install arbor-graph-cli

# Homebrew (macOS/Linux)
brew install Anandb71/tap/arbor

# Scoop (Windows)
scoop bucket add arbor https://github.com/Anandb71/arbor
scoop install arbor

# npm wrapper (cross-platform)
npx @anandb71/arbor-cli

# Docker
docker pull ghcr.io/anandb71/arbor:latest

No-Rust installers:

• macOS/Linux: curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Anandb71/arbor/main/scripts/install.sh | bash
• Windows PowerShell: irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Anandb71/arbor/main/scripts/install.ps1 | iex

For pinned/versioned installs, see docs/INSTALL.md.

MCP integration

Arbor includes a real MCP server via arbor bridge (stdio transport). v2.1.0 adds 10 tools — 6 surgical tools for precise graph traversal and 4 broad tools for architectural analysis.

Claude Code quick install

claude mcp add --transport stdio --scope project arbor -- arbor bridge
claude mcp list

Available tools

Surgical (v2.1.0): list_entry_points · get_callers · get_callees · search_symbols · get_file_graph · get_node_detail

Broad: get_logic_path · analyze_impact · find_path · get_knowledge_path

All tools return a standard envelope with suggested_next_tool + suggested_next_args so agents can chain calls without re-prompting.

Multi-client setup

• Full guide: docs/MCP_INTEGRATION.md
• Ready templates: templates/mcp/
• Bootstrap scripts:
  • scripts/setup-mcp.sh
  • scripts/setup-mcp.ps1

Registry verification (authoritative)

• Registry name: io.github.Anandb71/arbor
• Official API lookup: https://registry.modelcontextprotocol.io/v0.1/servers?search=io.github.Anandb71/arbor

Language support

Arbor supports production parsing and graph analysis across major ecosystems:

• Rust
• TypeScript / JavaScript
• Python
• Go
• Java
• C / C++
• C# (Native Tree-sitter)
• Dart
• Kotlin (fallback parser)
• Swift (fallback parser)
• Ruby (fallback parser)
• PHP (fallback parser)
• Shell (fallback parser)

Detailed parser notes and expansion guidance:

• docs/ADDING_LANGUAGES.md
• docs/ARCHITECTURE.md

Architecture and docs

Start here when you need deeper internals:

• docs/QUICKSTART.md
• docs/ARCHITECTURE.md
• docs/GRAPH_SCHEMA.md
• docs/PROTOCOL.md
• docs/MCP_INTEGRATION.md
• docs/ROADMAP.md

Git-aware CI workflows

Arbor supports pre-merge risk checks and change gating:

arbor diff --markdown
arbor check --max-blast-radius 30 --markdown
arbor summary

Use the repository GitHub Action for CI integration:

name: Arbor Check
on: [pull_request]

jobs:
  arbor:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v4
        with:
          fetch-depth: 0 # needed for full diff comparison
      
      - uses: Anandb71/arbor@v2.2.0
        with:
          command: check . --max-blast-radius 30 --markdown
          comment-on-pr: true # posts/updates report directly on the PR
          github-token: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

Release channels

Automated release distribution includes:

• GitHub Releases (platform binaries)
• crates.io
• GHCR container images
• npm wrapper package
• VS Code Marketplace / Open VSX extension channels
• Homebrew + Scoop

Runbook: docs/RELEASING.md

Contributing

Contributions are welcome.

• Start with: CONTRIBUTING.md
• Code of conduct: CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md
• Security policy: SECURITY.md
• Good first tasks: docs/GOOD_FIRST_ISSUES.md

For local development:

cargo build --workspace
cargo test --workspace

Contributors

Security

Arbor is local-first by design:

• No mandatory data exfiltration
• Offline-capable workflows
• Open-source code paths

Report vulnerabilities via SECURITY.md.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.