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areo-rgb/serena-index-vscode

v0.1.7MIT

VS Code Agent Plugin for the Areo-RGB Serena fork. Exposes a lean Serena toolset with five semantic reads backed by Code Intelligence MCP (intellij-mcp).

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Serena Code Intelligence VS Code Agent Plugin

Portable VS Code Agent Plugin for the Areo-RGB/serena-main fork.

The agent sees one MCP server, serena-index, with a deliberately small Serena tool surface. Five semantic-read tools delegate internally to the JetBrains Code Intelligence MCP (intellij-mcp) plugin.

Lean Serena tool surface

The VS Code plugin exposes these 11 tools:

  • activate_project
  • get_symbols_overview
  • find_symbol
  • find_referencing_symbols
  • get_symbol_info
  • get_type_hierarchy
  • replace_symbol_body
  • insert_before_symbol
  • insert_after_symbol
  • replace_content
  • replace_in_files

VS Code already provides file-name search, text/regex search, file reads, navigation, shell access, and line editing, so Serena intentionally does not duplicate those operations here.

Architecture

VS Code agent
    |
    v
Serena MCP (`serena-index`)
    |
    +-- get_symbols_overview ---------> get_file_symbols
    +-- find_symbol ------------------> find_symbol
    +-- find_referencing_symbols -----> find_references
    +-- get_symbol_info --------------> get_symbol_info
    +-- get_type_hierarchy -----------> get_type_hierarchy
                                        |
                                        v
                         Code Intelligence MCP
                         http://127.0.0.1:9876/mcp
                         (inside JetBrains)

Serena editing tools
    |
    v
Serena / LSP

There is no separate agent-visible IntelliJ/Index MCP server.

Requirements

  • VS Code with Agent Plugins enabled (chat.plugins.enabled)
  • uvx / uv available on PATH
  • Python 3.13 available to uv
  • JetBrains IDE with Code Intelligence MCP (intellij-mcp) running
  • target project open in JetBrains
  • endpoint available at http://127.0.0.1:9876/mcp

Install directly from GitHub

  1. Open the Command Palette.
  2. Run Chat: Install Plugin From Source.
  3. Enter:
https://github.com/Areo-RGB/serena_index_vscode.git
  1. Review the plugin and accept the trust prompt.
  2. Verify serena-index under MCP: List Servers or Chat Configure Tools.

Serena runtime

The plugin starts Serena with its LSP backend explicitly forced:

uvx -p 3.13 \
  --from git+https://github.com/Areo-RGB/serena-main \
  serena start-mcp-server \
  --context=vscode \
  --language-backend LSP \
  --open-web-dashboard=false

The LSP backend remains responsible for Serena's native editing capabilities. The five semantic reads above bypass LSP and use Code Intelligence MCP internally.

--project-from-cwd is intentionally not used because Agent Plugins start stdio servers from the plugin installation directory. If Serena has no active project or is on the wrong project, call activate_project with the current workspace root. The same project must be open in JetBrains for semantic reads.

VS Code hooks

The package includes Copilot-specific hooks at:

com.github.copilot/hooks/hooks.json

They run:

SessionStart -> serena-hooks activate --client=vscode
PreToolUse   -> serena-hooks remind --client=vscode
Stop         -> serena-hooks cleanup --client=vscode

Included skills

  • serena-index-workflow: explains the lean Serena + Code Intelligence MCP workflow.
  • serena-index-wrapper-test: validates the five semantic wrappers and the 11-tool surface.

Troubleshooting

If Serena or the hooks do not start, confirm uvx --version works in the environment VS Code inherits.

If semantic reads fail, verify http://127.0.0.1:9876/mcp, confirm the intended project is open in JetBrains, and wait for IDE indexing to finish.

If you still see old tools such as find_file, search_for_pattern, open_file, switch_project, jet_brains_*, or serena_info after updating, restart/reload the plugin so the new Serena context takes effect.