Install guide

jarvis is distributed as the jarvis-mcp Python package on PyPI, plus external binaries installed by setup.sh. This page covers every install method and what each component provides.

Prerequisites

• OS: macOS or Linux. jarvis does not support Windows.
• uv: install from https://docs.astral.sh/uv/
• PATH: after setup.sh, ~/.jarvis/bin must be on PATH.

Before installing, check your language is supported.

Install the CLI + MCP server

uv tool (recommended):

uv tool install --python 3.13 jarvis-mcp

Puts jarvis and jarvis-server on PATH via uv’s tool shims (uv tool dir’s bin/). This is also the fix for the uvx cold-start timeout — the wheel builds and caches once, so later uvx calls start in seconds.

uvx (ad-hoc, no install):

uvx --from jarvis-mcp jarvis-server

Nothing is added to PATH — uvx runs the server ephemerally each time, rebuilding from a cold uv cache the first time it’s invoked.

pip:

pip install jarvis-mcp

Puts jarvis and jarvis-server in the active Python environment’s bin/Scripts directory — only on PATH if that environment (a venv, or pip install --user’s target) is.

Two entry points are installed:

Command	Purpose
jarvis	The indexer CLI (index, list, status, reindex, forget, watch)
jarvis-server	The MCP stdio server your client connects to

Optional extras

Extra	Install	What it enables
semantic	uv tool install --python 3.13 "jarvis-mcp[semantic]"	semanticSearch (BAAI/bge-m3 embeddings, LanceDB, reciprocal rank fusion)
watch	uv tool install --python 3.13 "jarvis-mcp[watch]"	jarvis watch (debounced auto-reindex via watchdog)

Both can be combined: uv tool install --python 3.13 "jarvis-mcp[semantic,watch]".

External binaries (setup.sh)

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/jarvis-intelligence/jarvis-index/main/setup.sh | sh

setup.sh installs into ~/.jarvis/bin:

Binary	What it does
scip	Fork build (upstream v0.9.0 + scip#465 fix) — converts .scip to SQLite via scip expt-convert
zoekt-git-index / zoekt-webserver	Lexical search (cross-compiled, pinned via ZOEKT_COMMIT)
scip-typescript	TypeScript/JavaScript indexer
scip-python	Python indexer
scip-swift (macOS arm64 only)	Swift indexer (v0.1.2)
scip-java	Java/Kotlin indexer (needs java on PATH)

setup.sh is idempotent. Options: --only <name> (one dependency), --force (reinstall), --help.

Java / Kotlin limits

Android/Gradle projects and Kotlin repos not on the pinned Kotlin version cannot produce a SCIP index and are published search-only (lexical and semantic search work; navigation does not). See Troubleshooting: Upstream Issues.

Data directory

jarvis stores everything under ~/.jarvis/:

~/.jarvis/
├── bin/                         # external binaries (from setup.sh)
├── scip/_/<slug>/_/
│   ├── index-<sha>.db           # SQLite SCIP index (read-only at runtime)
│   └── current                  # pointer file (contains the live <sha>)
├── .zoekt/
│   └── <slug>_v16.*.zoekt       # Zoekt search shards
├── lancedb/                     # optional, semantic extra only
│   └── <slug>_v*.lance          # per-repo vector tables
└── registry.db                  # repos table + dependency-graph edges

See Concepts: Architecture for the full data layout.