Mesh in five minutes.

Mesh is a deterministic code-context engine that compresses your workspace 3.9× while keeping 100% recall. Same engine, four surfaces — terminal CLI, browser IDE, MCP server, and the raw Gateway API. This is everything you need to ship.

Pick a surface.

Install.

Mesh is shipped as a single npm binary. macOS, Linux, and WSL2 are first-class. Node 18+ required.

# global install (recommended)
$ npm i -g @edgarelmo/mesh-agent-cli

# or with pnpm / yarn
$ pnpm add -g @edgarelmo/mesh-agent-cli
$ yarn global add @edgarelmo/mesh-agent-cli

# verify
$ mesh --version
mesh 0.9.0

First run.

Mesh always opens against your current working directory. Drop into any repo and launch — it'll index the workspace before the agent says a word.

$ cd my-project
$ mesh

▸ scanning workspace…
✓ 247 files · 12 languages indexed in 1.4s
▸ building capsule (3.9× compression)…
✓ capsule cap_8kX9z2a ready

mesh › why are voided invoices being charged?
▸ pulled: invoices.ts:14, webhooks.ts:88, billing.spec.ts:42
✓ proposed patch · src/billing/invoices.ts
  press ↵ to apply, e to edit, q to skip

What just happened?

1. Scan — Mesh walks the working tree and skips .gitignore entries by default.
2. Compress — A capsule of structural symbols, signatures, and call edges is built (Tree-sitter under the hood).
3. Recover — When the agent needs full context, Mesh pulls the exact byte-range from disk — never from a hallucination.

Concepts.

Six things to understand before you go deep.

CLI · overview.

The terminal CLI is the canonical Mesh experience. Everything else (IDE, MCP, API) wraps the same engine.

Commands

Providers & keys

Mesh supports six providers out of the box. Set the env var, point MESH_PROVIDER at it, and go.

# Anthropic (default)
export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=sk-ant-...

# OpenAI
export OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-...

# OpenRouter (any model)
export OPENROUTER_API_KEY=sk-or-...

# Local: Ollama
export MESH_PROVIDER=ollama
export MESH_MODEL=llama3.3:70b

# Switch active provider
export MESH_PROVIDER=anthropic
export MESH_MODEL=claude-sonnet-4.6

Voice mode

Speak instead of type. Voice mode runs a local Whisper turbo model — nothing leaves your machine.

$ mesh voice install     # one-time, ~120MB model
$ mesh --voice            # launch in voice mode

✓ whisper-turbo loaded
🎙  press [space] to talk · [esc] to cancel

IDE · launch.

The Mesh IDE is a browser workspace at ide.try-mesh.com. VS Code-style file tree, structural search, and inline chat — all powered by the same capsule engine.

1. Open ide.try-mesh.com and sign in with GitHub.
2. Pick a repository (read-only or read-write).
3. Press ⌘K → Index workspace.
4. Open the chat panel (⌘L) and start asking.

Shortcuts

MCP · install & run.

The Mesh MCP server exposes capsule operations as Model Context Protocol tools. Any MCP-compatible client (Claude Desktop, Cursor, Zed) can use Mesh as a code-context backend.

$ npm i -g @edgarelmo/mesh-mcp
$ mesh mcp serve --port 7400

▸ binding 127.0.0.1:7400
✓ MCP server ready · 4 tools registered
  • mesh.search_code
  • mesh.read_span
  • mesh.find_refs
  • mesh.recover

Add to Claude Desktop / Cursor

Drop this snippet into your client's MCP config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "mesh": {
      "url": "http://localhost:7400",
      "description": "Mesh code context"
    }
  }
}

Tool reference

Gateway API · auth.

The Gateway API is a thin HTTPS layer around the same engine. Bearer-token auth. Rate-limited per key.

$ curl https://api.mesh.dev/v1/me \
    -H "Authorization: Bearer $MESH_KEY"

{ "id": "usr_8kX9", "plan": "preview", "rate_limit": 60 }

Capsules

Index a repo. Returns a capsule_id you can query against.

$ curl -X POST https://api.mesh.dev/v1/capsules \
    -H "Authorization: Bearer $MESH_KEY" \
    -d '{"repo":"github.com/acme/payments","branch":"main"}'

{
  "capsule_id": "cap_8kX9z2a",
  "files": 3174,
  "tokens_in": 2400000,
  "tokens_out": 612000,
  "ratio": 3.92,
  "recall": 1.00,
  "status": "ready"
}

Search & recover

$ curl "https://api.mesh.dev/v1/search?q=stripe.charge&capsule=cap_8kX9z2a" \
    -H "Authorization: Bearer $MESH_KEY"

{
  "matches": [
    { "path": "src/billing/invoices.ts", "line": 18, "score": 0.94 },
    { "path": "src/webhooks.ts",         "line": 88, "score": 0.81 }
  ]
}

Then recover the exact span — verbatim, byte-for-byte.

$ curl "https://api.mesh.dev/v1/recover?capsule=cap_8kX9z2a\
&path=src/billing/invoices.ts&line=18&context=10" \
    -H "Authorization: Bearer $MESH_KEY"

{
  "path": "src/billing/invoices.ts",
  "start_line": 8, "end_line": 28,
  "sha": "a3f8b9...",
  "source": "export async function finalizeInvoice(id) { ... }"
}

Errors

Configuration.

Mesh reads from three places, in order: CLI flags → env vars → ~/.mesh/config.toml. Later wins.

[provider]
default = "anthropic"
model = "claude-sonnet-4.6"
temperature = 0.2

[capsule]
max_tokens = 6000
compression = "high"     # "low" | "balanced" | "high"
exclude = ["node_modules", "dist", ".next"]

[ide]
auto_index = true

[telemetry]
enabled = false          # opt-in, off by default

Telemetry

Mesh ships with telemetry off. If you opt in (telemetry.enabled = true), we collect: command invocations, error types, and capsule sizes. Never source code, never queries. Disable any time.

Troubleshooting

Changelog

• 0.9.0 — Multi-hop reasoning benchmark added. mesh recover now byte-exact across all providers.
• 0.8.4 — MCP server ships standalone (@edgarelmo/mesh-mcp). find_refs tool added.
• 0.8.0 — Browser IDE preview. Capsule sharing via ~/.mesh/.
• 0.7.0 — Voice mode (Whisper turbo, local-only).
• 0.6.0 — Provider plugin system. Ollama support.

Stuck? Join the waitlist for direct support during private preview, or open an issue on GitHub.