Understand any codebase instantly.

System intelligence for humans and AI.

Ix parses your repository into a persistent system graph of symbols, calls, imports and relationships
so you and your coding agents can query structure instead of grepping and guessing.

Website · Docs · Live demo · Discord

Kartr

Kartr is an agent platform built on the same memory engine we use for Ix, extended to the sources a codebase does not contain: docs and files, email and calendar, meetings and notes, and team chat. Agents carry context across all of them.

Kartr is in alpha and onboarding early users.

Try Ix

curl -fsSL https://ix-infra.com/install.sh | sh    # macOS / Linux

ix map .                      # build the graph for this repo
ix explain AuthService        # what is this, and what does it touch?
ix trace user_login_flow      # how does this actually flow?
ix impact verify_token        # what breaks if I change this?

The graph lives on your machine and persists between sessions. Your agent navigates it through MCP instead of re-deriving your architecture from whatever fits in a prompt.

Why Ix

The model

Map → Structure → Retrieve → Remember

How it works

ix map parses your repository with tree-sitter, extracts symbols, calls and imports, and persists them as a graph in a local backend: ArangoDB plus the memory layer, run for you in Docker. Three clients read that graph: the ix CLI, the ix mcp server your AI clients connect to, and Compass, the visualizer ix view opens.

The backend ships as a released Docker image; it is not built from this repo. See the HTTP API reference for the endpoints all three clients share.

Results

Across our own development work, querying the graph instead of feeding files into the prompt cut token use by 30–99.7%, varying widely with the task and the size of the repo. These are internal measurements, not a published benchmark.

The mechanism is the plain part: ix explain AuthService returns that symbol and its immediate relationships. Answering the same question by reading the file and the files it imports costs far more, and costs it again next session.

Integrations

Ix ships a stdio MCP server, so any MCP-capable client can use the same graph tools.

ix mcp install            # detect installed clients and register `ix mcp` with each
ix mcp install --dry-run  # show what would change, write nothing
ix mcp doctor             # check each client's registration

install knows Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, VS Code, Gemini CLI, OpenClaw and opencode. It writes through each client's own MCP command where one exists, and never overwrites a server name it does not own. Pass --force to replace one, or --host <id> to limit the run. Per-client write mechanics, repair and process isolation are in docs/mcp.md.

To register one client by hand:

codex mcp add ix-memory -- ix mcp

Agent skill

skills/ix/ teaches any LLM agent to drive the CLI. It follows the Claude Code skill format and the agents.md standard, so Claude Code, Agents, Codex and Cursor all load the same tree from their own skills directory.

bash scripts/install-skill.sh   # deploy to every harness found (--dry-run to preview)

Then ask your agent: "Set up Ix and map this repo."

Native plugins

Optional per-client packages, if you prefer them to ix mcp install:

# Claude Code
/plugin marketplace add ix-infrastructure/ix-claude-plugin
/plugin install ix-memory

# Codex
curl -fsSL https://ix-infra.com/codex-install.sh | sh

# OpenClaw
openclaw plugins install ix-infrastructure/ix-openclaw-plugin

# Gemini
gemini extensions install https://github.com/ix-infrastructure/ix-gemini-plugin

# OpenCode
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ix-infrastructure/ix-opencode-plugin/main/install.sh | bash

# Cursor
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ix-infrastructure/ix-cursor-plugin/main/install.sh | bash

Each also publishes a Windows PowerShell installer. Swap install.sh | bash for install.ps1 | iex via irm.

Install

macOS / Linux

curl -fsSL https://ix-infra.com/install.sh | sh

Windows: install Node.js 22+ and Docker Desktop first, then:

irm https://ix-infra.com/install.ps1 | iex

Then map a repo and register your AI clients:

ix map .
ix mcp install

The installer checks for and installs anything missing: Node.js 22+, Git, ripgrep (powers ix text), and Docker + Docker Compose for the local backend. All you need beforehand is a terminal with curl or wget.

brew tap ix-infrastructure/ix https://github.com/ix-infrastructure/Ix
brew install ix

Commands

Ix talks to a local backend, so start there if a command reports Ix backend not reachable:

ix status          # is the backend reachable?
ix docker start    # start it (ArangoDB + memory layer)
ix doctor          # server, database and graph integrity

Set IX_DEBUG=1 for full stack traces on any error.

Build the graph

ix map .           # map this repo
ix watch           # re-map on change

Understand

ix search <term>       # find an entity by name
ix locate <symbol>     # jump to a definition
ix explain <symbol>    # what it is and what it touches
ix overview <target>   # one-shot structural summary
ix impact <target>     # blast radius of a change
ix read <target>       # read source, by symbol or path:line-range

Explore

ix trace <symbol>      # follow a flow up and down
ix callers <symbol>    # what calls this
ix callees <symbol>    # what this calls
ix rank --by dependents --top 10   # find the load-bearing code
ix inventory --kind function       # list components
ix history <target>    # how an entity changed
ix diff <from> <to>    # compare two revisions

Inspect the system

ix view            # open the Compass visualizer
ix stats           # graph statistics
ix smells          # detect structural issues

Query commands take --format text|json|llm. Use llm when an agent reads the output. It is token-minimal and newline-delimited (spec). Use json when chaining commands.

Exhaustive references: commands · flags · output formats · troubleshooting

Supported languages

Symbols, calls and imports are extracted across 27 languages:

JavaScript TypeScript Python Java C C++ C# Go Ruby Rust PHP Kotlin Swift Scala R SAS Elixir Haskell Zig Lua Bash PowerShell HTML XML CSS HCL / Terraform Makefile

CUDA (.cu / .cuh) is parsed with the C++ grammar, including kernel-launch syntax (kernel<<<grid, block>>>(args)), so host-to-kernel calls appear in the graph. Python stub files (.pyi) are parsed as Python.

Also recognized as config and data formats: YAML JSON TOML SQL Protocol Buffers Dockerfile Markdown LaTeX

Status

Alpha, and moving quickly. APIs and behavior may change. If you are running Ix on a large or unusual codebase, we want the bug report.

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md for local setup, and SECURITY.md to report a vulnerability.

Docs · Website · Live demo · Discord

Licensed under Apache 2.0. ⭐ Star the repo if Ix is useful to you.