core/ide

What Does core-ide Actually Do

core-ide exposes the Core IDE runtime as MCP tools, named Core actions, and a local chat shell. It wires workspace inspection, OpenBrain memory, subagent relay, navigation, and package marketplace helpers into one process. It can run as stdio MCP for editor clients, HTTP MCP for local agents, or a Wails desktop shell. The GUI mode mounts chat and MCP against the same in-process executor so tool results match non-GUI mode. HTTP mode is local-only and bearer-token gated by default.

Connect It To Claude Code

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "core-ide": {
      "command": "core-ide",
      "args": ["--mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Running Modes

Mode	Command	Use case
stdio MCP	core-ide --mcp	Claude Code, Cursor, Continue
HTTP MCP	core-ide --no-gui --http 127.0.0.1:9880 --token $TOK	JetBrains, remote agents
GUI shell	core-ide (default)	local desktop with chat

Wildcard binds such as :9880 and 0.0.0.0:9880 are rejected; use an explicit loopback address.

Tools You Get

The 19-tool MCP/action parity check is enforced in pkg/server/integration_action_parity_test.go.

• brain_recall
• brain_remember
• brain_forget
• brain_list
• brain_context
• workspace_status
• workspace_conventions
• workspace_impact
• workspace_scan
• subagent_guide
• subagent_ask
• subagent_progress
• subagent_watch (supports cursor, limit, nextCursor, and hasMore for paged event history)
• subagent_answer
• subagent_dispatch_guided
• core_navigate
• pkg_search
• pkg_info
• pkg_install

What's Hardened

• HTTP mode refuses to start without a bearer token.
• REST and MCP-over-HTTP requests require Authorization: Bearer <token>; missing or wrong tokens return 401.
• HTTP and relay listeners must bind to localhost or a loopback IP; wildcard and externally routable addresses are rejected.
• HTTP read-header, read, write, and idle timeouts are bounded.
• HTTP headers are capped at 1 MiB and request bodies at 10 MiB.
• The relay listener is only enabled when a relay path, loopback bind, and bearer token are configured.

Live OpenBrain Smoke

The live OpenBrain test is build-tagged and skipped by default:

CORE_BRAIN_INTEGRATION=1 CORE_BRAIN_KEY=$CORE_BRAIN_KEY \
  go test -tags integration -run TestLive ./pkg/brain/...

End-to-End Smoke

After building changes, run:

tests/smoke/run-end-to-end.sh

The script builds /tmp/core-ide, verifies stdio MCP exposes 19 tools, verifies HTTP bearer auth exposes the same 19 tools, calls workspace_status through the HTTP tool bridge, checks malformed tool input and schema validation failures, checks unauthenticated HTTP returns 401, and confirms HTTP mode without a token exits with status 1.