miller

Miller

Miller is a local code-intelligence server for coding agents. It keeps a current SQLite-backed view of a workspace, then answers structural questions through MCP and a matching CLI: find symbols, inspect files, build focused context, trace relationships, assess change impact, and check workspace freshness without asking an agent to grep and reread the repo by hand.

Miller is the free local core in the Miller/Eros product split. It stays deterministic, lexical/structural, daemon-light, and embedding-free. Eros sits above it for higher-level guidance, semantic/vector workflows, confidence/evidence views, and commercial orchestration.

The practical difference from a one-time graph dump is that Miller is built for active agent work:

• workspace state, freshness, refresh, and selectors are first-class;
• CLI and MCP calls share the same read cores, so examples can be dogfooded in a shell and used by agents;
• the registry, telemetry, and dashboard show what Miller knows right now;
• stale or corrupt search sidecars fail visibly instead of silently lying; refresh the workspace or explicitly opt out with MILLER_SEARCH_SIDECAR=0 when debugging the in-memory fallback;
• cross-language bridge evidence stays structural and provider-scoped, not embedding-driven.

Current release: v0.5.4. Miller ships as agent plugins, self-contained per-platform release archives, and a source-checkout workflow.

Website: anortham.github.io/miller · Release: v0.5.4

Quickstart

Most Claude Code and Codex users should start with the agent plugin. Cursor is different: use a global ~/.cursor/mcp.json entry that passes the active workspace root to Miller. The plugin launcher downloads the matching Miller release archive, verifies its .sha256 sidecar, caches it under ~/.miller/plugin-cache/, and starts miller serve as an MCP server.

Claude Code:

/plugin marketplace add anortham/miller
/plugin install miller@miller

Cursor global MCP install:

version=v0.5.4
base="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anortham/miller/$version"
launcher_root="$HOME/.miller/plugin-cache/cursor-global-miller"
mkdir -p "$launcher_root/bin" "$HOME/.cursor"
curl -fsSL "$base/bin/miller-plugin-launcher.cjs" -o "$launcher_root/bin/miller-plugin-launcher.cjs"
curl -fsSL "$base/miller-plugin.json" -o "$launcher_root/miller-plugin.json"
cat > ~/.cursor/mcp.json <<'JSON'
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "miller": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "node",
      "args": [
        "${userHome}/.miller/plugin-cache/cursor-global-miller/bin/miller-plugin-launcher.cjs"
      ],
      "env": {
        "MILLER_WORKSPACE_ROOT": "${workspaceFolder}"
      }
    }
  }
}
JSON

$version = "v0.5.4"
$base = "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/anortham/miller/$version"
$launcherRoot = "$env:USERPROFILE\.miller\plugin-cache\cursor-global-miller"
New-Item -ItemType Directory -Force "$launcherRoot\bin", "$env:USERPROFILE\.cursor"
Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "$base/bin/miller-plugin-launcher.cjs" -OutFile "$launcherRoot\bin\miller-plugin-launcher.cjs"
Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "$base/miller-plugin.json" -OutFile "$launcherRoot\miller-plugin.json"
@'
{
  "mcpServers": {
    "miller": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "node",
      "args": [
        "${userHome}/.miller/plugin-cache/cursor-global-miller/bin/miller-plugin-launcher.cjs"
      ],
      "env": {
        "MILLER_WORKSPACE_ROOT": "${workspaceFolder}"
      }
    }
  }
}
'@ | Set-Content -Encoding utf8 "$env:USERPROFILE\.cursor\mcp.json"

Reload Cursor after installing. MILLER_WORKSPACE_ROOT="${workspaceFolder}" is required for a user-wide Cursor install: Cursor may start global MCP servers from the home directory or an empty/global window, and Miller refuses to index those broad roots. The launcher ignores an unresolved ${workspaceFolder} value and fails closed if Cursor has no real project root, instead of indexing the launcher cache or a system path. Do not use ~/.cursor/plugins/local/miller as the normal Cursor install path; Cursor can start plugin MCP servers before a workspace exists and can also auto-import Claude plugin copies, leaving duplicate or stale errored Miller rows.

After installing, open a code workspace and ask your agent to search, inspect, build context, trace, or check impact with Miller. Miller writes its local index under that workspace's .miller/ directory.

Manual Binary Install

Use this path when your MCP client does not use Miller's plugin package.

1. Download the archive for your platform from the v0.5.4 release, plus the matching .sha256 sidecar:

   • miller-0.5.4-aarch64-apple-darwin.tar.gz
   • miller-0.5.4-x86_64-apple-darwin.tar.gz
   • miller-0.5.4-x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu.tar.gz
   • miller-0.5.4-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc.zip