loupe

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loupeFast indexed full-text code search

One n-gram index. Three front-ends: CLI, MCP server, and VS Code. UTF-8, Shift_JIS, and EUC-JP — all in one index.

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Compact n-gram index

A small fraction of your code size, not a copy of it. One-time build, then near-instant searches — no re-scan on every query.

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Per-folder encoding

Each folder is decoded (UTF-8 / Shift_JIS / EUC-JP) at index time, so a single index serves mixed-encoding trees and legacy non-UTF-8 text is searchable without mojibake.

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Incremental updates

Search auto-syncs changed files first. The daemon and VS Code extension watch the tree and reindex only what changed — the index always stays fresh.

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Substring and regex

n-gram candidates → exact verify (Zoekt/codesearch style). 2-char queries work, including 2-char CJK words like åĨ‘įī„ and 饧åŪĒ. Case-sensitive or case-insensitive, your choice.

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One index, three front-ends

The CLI, MCP server (for AI agents), and VS Code extension all read the same index and the same settings.json — they can never disagree about what's indexed.

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Self-contained native binary

One loupe executable per platform. No Docker, no runtime dependencies, no daemon required for the CLI. Runs anywhere.

VS Code Extension ​

Install from the VS Code Marketplace — or grab a .vsix from GitHub Releases.

The extension ships two search UIs that share the same index as the CLI and MCP server, updated automatically in the background.

Sidebar (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+F) — persistent panel with streaming results grouped by file, match highlighting, case-sensitive toggle (Aa), regex toggle (.*), max-results dropdown, and glob path filters.

QuickPick (Ctrl+Alt+F) — lightweight one-shot search into a filterable dropdown.

VS Code Extension reference →

Install ​

Prebuilt binaries for Linux, macOS, and Windows are on GitHub Releases.

bash
# Linux / macOS
curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -LsSf https://github.com/ukitomato/loupe/releases/latest/download/loupe-installer.sh | sh
powershell
# Windows (PowerShell)
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -c "irm https://github.com/ukitomato/loupe/releases/latest/download/loupe-installer.ps1 | iex"

Or build from source:

bash
cargo install --git https://github.com/ukitomato/loupe loupe

Quick start ​

bash
# 1. Configure roots (add @enc suffix for non-UTF-8 folders)
loupe init --root src --root legacy@shift_jis

# 2. Build the index
loupe build

# 3. Search — auto-syncs first
loupe search "calcTotal"
loupe search "åĨ‘įī„" --case-sensitive
loupe search "parse[A-Za-z]+Request" --regex

Full guide →

Performance ​

Measured on ≈290k files (~260k UTF-8 + ~29k Shift_JIS):

Index size≈237 MB
First build (one-time, cold)~28 min
Search — specific identifier~180 ms
Search — Japanese in Shift_JIS~156 ms
Search — very common term< 1 s

Released under the MIT License.

Built on Tantivy (MIT)