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Using Grove

OverviewSearch syntaxCode navigationCommit and diff searchSaved searches and contextsAI assistants (MCP)Browser extension

Running Grove

DeploymentConfigurationAuthenticationCode hosts

Grove documentation

Grove is self-hosted code search. It clones the repositories of your GitHub, GitLab and Bitbucket organizations, indexes them with Zoekt and universal-ctags, and makes them searchable from a web app, a browser extension and any AI assistant that speaks the Model Context Protocol.

The Grove start page with the search bar and a syntax cheat sheetThe Grove start page with the search bar and a syntax cheat sheet

Using Grove

  • Search syntax: text and regex queries, filters such as repo:, file: and lang:, and how to search a specific branch, tag or commit.
  • Code navigation: browsing files, blame and history, and jumping between definitions and references.
  • Commit and diff search: searching commit messages, and finding the commits that added or removed a line.
  • Saved searches and contexts: bookmarking and scheduling queries, alerts, and reusable search scopes.
  • AI assistants (MCP): connecting Claude Code, GitHub Copilot and other MCP clients.
  • Browser extension: definitions and references directly on your code host.

Running Grove

  • Deployment: requirements, the container image, storage and databases.
  • Configuration: every environment variable, with defaults.
  • Authentication: OIDC sign-in, API keys, service tokens and proxy headers.
  • Code hosts: connecting GitHub, GitLab and Bitbucket and choosing what gets indexed.

Quick tour

  1. Search. Type in the search bar on any page. Press / to focus it. The Text / Regex toggle decides how free text is read; filters like repo: work in both.
  2. Narrow down. The sidebar on the results page counts matches per language and repository; click one to add it as a filter.
  3. Open a file. Click a result to open the code viewer at that line. Hover an identifier to find its references or definition.
  4. Keep it. Save search bookmarks the query; Download exports the results.
  5. Connect your tools. Set me up in the top bar creates an API key and shows the configuration for Claude Code, GitHub Copilot and the browser extension.