cupertino

Cupertino is a local, structured documentation server that crawls Apple developer docs and related sources, indexes them into a fast search-ready SQLite database, and serves the content to AI agents via the Model Context Protocol (MCP). It is designed to work offline and provide deterministic search results for 302,424+ pages across hundreds of frameworks. The server exposes tools to fetch and build the documentation data, create a searchable index, and run an MCP-compliant server that responds to context queries from clients like Claude or other MCP-enabled agents. Typical workflows involve fetching or downloading prebuilt databases, building or updating the search index, and launching the server so client tools can query the documentation locally.

Prerequisites:

• macOS 15+ (Sequoia)
• Sufficient disk space (2–3 GB for full doc set; more if you build from source)
• Optional: Swift 6.2+ and Xcode 16+ for building from source

Installation options:

1. One-command install (recommended):

bash <(curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mihaelamj/cupertino/main/install.sh)

This downloads a pre-built, signed, and notarized universal binary and installs it to /usr/local/bin, plus downloads documentation databases.

2. Homebrew (recommended for macOS users):

brew tap mihaelamj/tap
brew install cupertino
cupertino setup

3. Build from source (requires Swift toolchain):

git clone https://github.com/mihaelamj/cupertino.git
cd cupertino

# Using Makefile (recommended)
make build
sudo make install  # installs to /usr/local/bin

# Or with Swift Package Manager directly
cd Packages
swift build -c release
sudo ln -sf "$(pwd)/.build/release/cupertino" /usr/local/bin/cupertino

After installation you can run the server with the default command:

cupertino  # Starts MCP server (default)

Notes and tips:

• The default path for Homebrew installs may vary; use which cupertino to verify the executable path and adjust your MCP client configs accordingly.
• If you are on Apple Silicon, some examples in the docs reference /opt/homebrew/bin/cupertino. Use the path appropriate for your setup.
• To speed up initial setup, you can use cupertino setup to download prebuilt databases before starting the server.
• The server supports multiple fetch/save/index workflows (e.g., cupertino fetch, cupertino save, cupertino index). Use cupertino serve to start the MCP server and respond to MCP requests from clients.
• When running in CI or headless environments, ensure the necessary permissions for binaries and databases are set (e.g., sudo rights for installation paths).
• Environment considerations: if you customize paths, ensure the client applications use the same cupertino executable and arguments (serve) to maintain compatibility.