ideconnect

IDEConnect provides a shared, persistent project context that sits between your AI IDEs and local files. The server reads structured project context from the .ideconnect directory and exposes MCP tools such as get_project_context, get_overview, get_architecture, get_constraints, get_decisions, and get_roadmap. This lets all your IDEs (e.g., Cursor, Kiro, Antigravity, Claude Desktop) reason about the same project scope and decisions without relying on chat history. Use the available tools to fetch the latest project context, overview, architecture, constraints, decisions, or roadmap, and feed that structured context into your AI workflows for consistent results across IDEs.

To use IDEConnect, configure your IDE to point at the MCP server as shown in the IDE configuration section of the README. Once configured, invoke the MCP tools via your IDE, CLI adapter, or the provided file-injection workflow to retrieve the current project context in JSON. The tools return a deterministic view of the project based on the markdown context files stored in the .ideconnect directory, ensuring all IDEs share the same understanding of the project.

Prerequisites:

• Node.js 18.x or higher
• npm or yarn

Installation steps:

1. Install the IDEConnect CLI globally from npm (recommended):

npm install -g ideconnect

2. In your project directory, run the setup to initialize and configure IDEConnect:

ideconnect setup

This automated setup will:
- Check Node.js version
- Install dependencies
- Create a .ideconnect/ directory
- Initialize context file templates (overview.md, architecture.md, constraints.md, decisions.md, roadmap.md)
- Auto-detect and configure supported IDEs
- Generate file injection for non-MCP IDEs

3. After setup, edit the context files under .ideconnect/ to document your project:

• overview.md
• architecture.md
• constraints.md
• decisions.md
• roadmap.md (optional)

4. Restart your IDE to load IDEConnect and start using context-aware AI assistance.

If you prefer to run the server directly without the CLI, ensure you have Node.js installed and start the server with:

node server/index.js

Prerequisites and troubleshooting are covered in the README under Common Issues & Troubleshooting if you encounter setup or connection problems.

Tips and notes:

• IDEConnect stores project context locally in the .ideconnect directory; there are no external dependencies beyond your local environment.
• Each project should have its own .ideconnect directory; IDEConnect will search up the directory tree to find context when working across multiple folders.
• If an IDE is not detected automatically, you can manually configure it by editing your MCP config in the IDE (e.g., Cursor or Claude Desktop) to point to the ideconnect server and the absolute path to server/index.js.
• Common issues include Node.js version mismatches (must be 18+), file permissions, and ensuring the .ideconnect directory exists and is writable.
• When updating context files, changes are reflected once the IDE requests the project context; some environments may require an IDE restart.
• For version control, consider committing the .ideconnect directory so teammates share the same project context.
• Use the provided MCP tools (get_overview, get_architecture, get_constraints, get_decisions, get_roadmap, get_project_context) to retrieve structured JSON representations of your project context.