jane

Jane is an MCP server that transforms your team's documentation into an AI-accessible knowledge base. Built with TypeScript and the official MCP SDK, Jane enables MCP-compatible clients like Claude Desktop and Claude Code to search, access, and manage standard library documentation and project specifications with SQLite-powered performance. You can query for APIs, coding standards, architectural decisions, and other project knowledge, and Jane will return relevant documents and metadata. The server exposes a suite of MCP tools for discovery, access, and content management, such as list_stdlibs, list_specs, search, get_stdlib, get_spec, create_document, and update_document, allowing your team to organize and retrieve information efficiently. Jane uses a local SQLite database (document-index.db) with FTS5 for fast full-text search and smart indexing that processes only new or modified documents on startup.

To use Jane with Claude Desktop or Claude Code, configure Jane as an MCP server like in the example config, pointing to the built server entry point (dist/index.js). Once configured and the server is running, you can issue natural-language queries such as "Show me our coding standards for TypeScript" or "Find the database schema requirements for the user service" and Jane will fetch the appropriate docs from stdlib and specs.

Prerequisites:

• Node.js 18+ and npm 8+
• Access to an MCP-compatible client (e.g., Claude Desktop, Claude Code, or a custom MCP client)
• A development environment with Git and a shell

Installation steps:

1. Clone the repository and navigate to the project directory:

git clone <repository-url>
cd jane-mcp-server

2. Install dependencies:

npm install

3. Build the project (if provided):

npm run build

4. Start the server locally to verify it runs:

npm start

You should see a confirmation like: Jane MCP server is running and ready for connections

5. Integrate with your MCP client by updating the client configuration to point at the built server entry point, for example using an absolute path to dist/index.js as shown in the Claude Desktop integration instructions.

Tips and troubleshooting:

• Ensure the server is reachable by your MCP client and that Node.js is in your PATH (node --version).
• The SQLite database document-index.db is located in the server directory and is automatically created on first run. If you encounter database errors, check permissions and available disk space.
• If Jane doesn’t appear in MCP lists, verify the absolute path in your client config and re-run the server build/start sequence.
• You can organize documents under stdlib and specs, and store metadata (title, description, author, tags) in Markdown with YAML frontmatter as described in the README.
• For privacy, you can use symlinks to private documentation folders as described in the Document Management with Symlinks section to keep docs separate from the server repository.
• Common diagnostics: run npm start to resync the database, or npx tsx tests/jane-diagnostics.ts to perform health checks.
• If you run into 404 or retrieval issues, confirm the document files exist on disk and that file permissions allow read access.