drift

Drift is a codebase intelligence MCP server designed to assist IDEs with AI-powered insights. It analyzes your code to detect patterns and conventions, helps you remember decisions across sessions, and provides offline CLI capabilities for rapid local exploration. As an MCP server, Drift exposes tooling that IDE integrations can consume to offer suggestions, enforcement of project conventions, and cross-session decision memory for your codebase. If you’re using the v2 Drift setup, you’ll typically rely on the unified CLI/agent that communicates with your editor to surface analyses, patterns, and recommendations as you work.

To use its tools, run Drift through the supported runtime (Docker in this setup). The server will expose endpoints or interfaces that IDEs can query for intelligence, and you can interact with it via the provided CLI or editor plugins. Expect features such as pattern detection across files, convention enforcement suggestions, offline CLI exploration of code decisions, and persistent memory of decisions across your development sessions.

Prerequisites:

• Docker (installed and running)
• Basic familiarity with running containerized services

Installation steps (Docker-based):

1. Ensure Docker is installed and running on your machine.
2. Pull and run the Drift MCP server image: docker run -i dadbodgeoff/drift
3. If you need to customize environment variables (e.g., to point to a specific workspace or config), pass them via -e flags to docker run, for example: docker run -i -e DRIFT_WORKSPACE=/path/to/workspace -e DRIFT_CONFIG=/path/to/config dadbodgeoff/drift
4. Connect your IDE to the running Drift MCP server using the standard MCP connection settings defined by Drift (usually via the IDE’s MCP integration panel).

Alternative (build from source):

• Follow Drift v2 monorepo documentation to build standalone binaries or setup local development, then run the server as per the produced artifact. Since Drift v2 contains both Rust and TypeScript components, you may build the Rust core and the TS CLI per the repository guidelines and then start the local server accordingly.

Tips and notes:

• This Drift MCP server is intended to work with modern IDEs via the MCP protocol. Ensure your IDE plugin is configured to connect to the server address where Docker exposes it (typically localhost with the container's mapped port).
• If you encounter connection issues, verify Docker is running, the container image tag is correct, and that any required environment variables (like workspace paths) are set.
• For performance, you can run Drift in a dedicated workspace directory and mount volumes to preserve state across restarts, if the image supports such configuration.
• Check Drift v2 documentation for specifics on capabilities such as pattern detection, cross-session memory, and offline CLI features; capabilities may vary by version and plugin integration.
• If you need to switch to a local development setup, consult the Drift v2 docs to build the Rust core and TypeScript CLI components and run the server in development mode.