TerseSharp 0.26.0

TerseSharp

The bridge between your coding agent and your C# codebase.

A Roslyn-powered MCP server so your agent navigates, edits, refactors, builds and tests .NET semantically — instead of reading whole files and grepping for symbols. 86 tools. One install. No IDE, no licence, no language server.

Install

dotnet tool install -g TerseSharp
terse install            # registers with Claude Code, Cursor, VS Code, Windsurf

That's it. Restart your agent and ask it something about your code — with no arguments the server walks up from the current directory, finds your .sln / .slnx / .slnf / .csproj and loads it.

terse install --client cursor   # not detected? pick one: claude-code | cursor | vscode | windsurf
terse install --skill --guard   # teach your agent the tools, and block Read/Grep on C# (recommended)
terse doctor                    # verify SDK, MSBuild, workspace load, client registration
terse call get_file_outline --workspace App.slnx --json '{"path":"src/App/Order.cs"}'

No IDE, no licence, no Node, no Python, no API key, and no network call to answer a question — the only request it ever makes is one HEAD to GitHub's releases/latest, at most once a day, to tell you an update exists. TERSE_UPDATE=0 turns that off.

Prefer to configure MCP by hand:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "terse-sharp": {
      "command": "terse",
      "args": ["serve", "--workspace", "C:/path/to/YourApp.slnx"]
    }
  }
}

What it saves you

Asserted by a token-budget suite in CI on every commit, not estimated.

• Semantic, never textual. Real references, not string matches — every record tagged EXACT or HEURISTIC, so you always know what you're trusting.
• Compile-gated edits. An edit that introduces a compile error is rolled back before the agent reports it done, and undo_last_change reverses the last one. replace_symbol takes a whole batch of edits across files, so a signature change lands with the callers it breaks.
• No silently-ignored arguments. A parameter a tool doesn't declare is refused by name, with every accepted spelling — a listing that quietly dropped your maxResults is a wrong answer the agent can't detect.
• Always fresh. A file you just created, or an edit from your IDE, is already in the answer.
• Never guesses. Where it can't prove an answer it says so — a false positive costs an agent more than no answer.

Make your agent actually use it

An agent that has TerseSharp installed and reaches for Read and Grep out of habit saves nothing. terse install --guard registers a Claude Code PreToolUse hook that denies the built-in and names the tool to use instead — covering .cs, .razor, .xaml, .axaml, .resx, .csproj, .sln and friends, the shell text tools (grep, cat, sed, ls, …) that name one of them, dotnet build/test/format/clean and dotnet watch build/test, and the working-tree half of git — git status and git diff, answered by changed_files and diff_symbols, and only when the working directory sits under a .sln/.slnx/.slnf/.csproj, since the hook is user-wide and those tools cannot answer in a repository TerseSharp does not serve. A denied command also tells the agent not to run it in Bash again. Plain .css, .js, dotnet restore/pack/publish/run and git history and mutation (log, blame, show, add, commit, push) are allowed, because nothing here replaces those; malformed hook input allows the call, so a guard fault can never wedge a session; and you remove the guard by deleting the terse guard entry from Claude Code's settings.json. Pair it with --skill, which ships Claude Code the skill that teaches the swaps — on any other agent, put the same rule in AGENTS.md or .cursorrules.

The tools

86 tools. One record per line, workspace-relative paths, an explicit truncated/total, and a success that costs nothing — every mutating tool answers in one line per changed file, with verbose=true for the diff and dryRun=true to preview it. Any caveat prints in full.

Markup and localization the compiler can't check

TerseSharp holds the markup tree and the Roslyn compilation in one process, so it answers what no text tool can: xaml_bindings validate=true type-checks every {Binding} path against the real symbol (WPF has no compile-time binding check at all), razor_validate catches the attribute matching no [Parameter] that compiles clean and throws at render, resx_validate reports missing translations and placeholder mismatches across a whole family, and rename_symbol carries a rename into the markup — but only where an x:Class or x:DataType proves the reference.

Safety and freshness

• Symbol-addressed edits — no old_string echo, no line numbers to drift, and dryRun on every mutation returns the diff and writes nothing.
• Compile-gated — a C#, Razor or refactoring edit that introduces a new compile error is rolled back, and the C# and refactoring ones are reversible with undo_last_change. The .resx, .xaml, Razor and project/package/solution writers are surgical file writes outside undo, so preview those with dryRun. --read-only makes every mutating tool refuse and touch nothing.
• Follows the disk — a FileSystemWatcher nominates changed paths and a content comparison decides, so a dropped OS event can delay a refresh but never corrupt one.
• Bounded memory — four solutions stay loaded at once, and one idle for 15 minutes gives its compilations back.
• Parallel worktrees — every answer names its worktree and branch, and an ambiguous request lists the candidates instead of guessing.

Links

• Source, full documentation and issues
• Changelog
• Contributing
• Security policy

License

MIT Licensed. See LICENSE.

Built on Roslyn and the MCP C# SDK.