Getting Started

Platform availability

Prebuilt releases ship for Linux x86_64 (.tar.gz, .deb, .rpm), Windows x86_64 (.tar.gz), and macOS arm64 / Apple Silicon (.tar.gz). Intel (x86_64) Macs are not yet served by a prebuilt binary — build from source on those. The installers fail fast with a clear message on any unsupported platform/arch.

Installation

One-line install

# Linux / macOS
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/standardbeagle/lci-cpp/main/install.sh | sh

# Windows (PowerShell)
irm https://raw.githubusercontent.com/standardbeagle/lci-cpp/main/install.ps1 | iex

Both detect your OS/arch, download the matching release binary, and install it (/usr/local/bin or ~/.local/bin on Unix; %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\lci on Windows). Override with LCI_PREFIX; pin a version with LCI_VERSION=0.10.1.

npm

npm install -g @standardbeagle/lci
lci --version

Downloads the prebuilt binary for your platform — no compiler required.

uv / pip

uv tool install lci-cli      # or: pipx install lci-cli
lci --version

Downloads the prebuilt binary for your platform — no compiler required.

Release artifact

# Linux: tarball or Debian package
curl -fLO https://github.com/standardbeagle/lci-cpp/releases/download/v0.10.1/lci-0.10.1-Linux.tar.gz
tar -xzf lci-0.10.1-Linux.tar.gz
sudo install lci-0.10.1-Linux/bin/lci /usr/local/bin/

# or
sudo dpkg -i lci-0.10.1-Linux.deb

lci --version   # 0.10.1
lci search "myFunction"

Updating

lci update            # self-update to the latest release
lci update --check    # report current vs latest without installing
lci update --version 0.10.1   # install a specific release

lci update works regardless of how lci was installed. Package-manager users can also run npm update -g @standardbeagle/lci or uv tool upgrade lci-cli.

Building from source

Toolchain: GCC 13+ or Clang 17+, CMake 3.25+, vcpkg, Ninja.

cmake --preset release \
  -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=$VCPKG_ROOT/scripts/buildsystems/vcpkg.cmake
cmake --build build/release --parallel
./build/release/src/lci --version

Install and package the build:

cd build/release
sudo cmake --install .
cpack -G TGZ    # produces lci-0.10.1-Linux.tar.gz
cpack -G DEB    # produces lci-0.10.1-Linux.deb

The CPack output contains only bin/lci. Tree-sitter grammars are statically linked; the binary dynamically links libc, libstdc++, libssl (via libcrypto), zlib, and brotli — the Debian package declares only libc6 (>= 2.35) since the rest ship on modern Linux by default.

Running the test suite

cmake --build build/release --parallel
ctest --preset release --parallel $(nproc)

The preset excludes the separately gated benchmark target. Run ./build/release/tests/lci_benchmarks explicitly for performance checks.

Your first search

lci search "myFunction"

Full CLI reference: lci --help or lci <command> --help, or see CLI Usage.

Synonyms

.lci.kdl accepts a top-level synonyms block that widens semantic search expansion. Children are group <words…> (treat the listed words as synonyms of each other), clear <word> (drop a word from any group), and a leading clear-all (discard the built-in table before applying the rest of the block):

synonyms {
    clear-all
    group "get" "fetch" "retrieve"
    group "delete" "remove" "del"
    clear "add"
}

An unrecognized child name is a config error. Synonym expansion only applies when search’s semantic option is on (the default) and no explicit patterns were given.