Why Bifrost?

bifrost is Brokk's Rust-based static analysis toolbox for AI coding harnesses, editors, and large repositories.

Bifrost gives every supported language a shared intermediate representation, so the same structural query and navigation workflows work across a mixed-language repository instead of stopping at language boundaries.

• One multi-language IR. Parse unbuilt or partially broken workspaces and normalize their source structure for cross-language analysis.
• A real query language. Use JSON CodeQuery or the Rune Query Language (RQL) to find language-neutral code shapes and traverse indexed declarations, references, calls, imports, and type relationships.
• Built for agents and editors. Expose structured MCP tools to coding agents, LSP features to editors, and the same analyzer through the CLI, Python, and Rust.
• Designed for active repositories. Snapshot isolation, incremental updates, content-based caching, and git/worktree awareness keep analysis responsive as a repository changes.

See Choose Bifrost for the right interface for your workflow, and the Language and Analysis Capabilities matrix for language-by-language support, precision tiers, and current analysis boundaries.

Run Your First Query

Install the released CLI, clone the small verified evaluation fixture, and run its saved RQL query:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/BrokkAi/bifrost/refs/heads/master/install.sh | bash
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/BrokkAi/bifrost.git
cd bifrost/docs/fixtures/ten-minute-evaluation
bifrost --root . --query-file queries/find-audit.rql

Users with uv or pipx can instead run uv tool install brokk-bifrost or pipx install brokk-bifrost; both install the same native bifrost command from a platform wheel in an isolated environment. uvx brokk-bifrost --version runs it without a persistent install.

Node users can run npm install -g @brokkai/bifrost or use npx -y @brokkai/bifrost --version. The npm package installs the same released native command for the current platform.

The installer downloads the checksum-verified release binary into ~/.local/bin on macOS (Apple Silicon and Intel), Linux (x86-64 glibc or musl, ARM64 glibc), WSL, and Android under Termux. Homebrew users on macOS and Linux (x86-64 and ARM64 glibc) can run brew install brokkai/tap/bifrost instead. On Windows, and on ARM64 musl distributions such as Alpine, build from source with cargo install brokk-bifrost --locked. See Install Bifrost for the full platform table.

The result identifies the normalized Python call and its exact source location:

{
  "isError": false,
  "structuredContent": {
    "results": [
      {
        "enclosing_symbol": "src.app.handle",
        "end_line": 5,
        "kind": "call",
        "language": "python",
        "path": "src/app.py",
        "result_type": "structural_match",
        "start_line": 5,
        "text": "audit(value)"
      }
    ],
    "truncated": false
  }
}

Continue with the ten-minute evaluation to run the same query through the CLI, an MCP-connected coding agent, and VS Code.

See Bifrost in Action

Turn Source into a Query in VS Code

Select a source construct and run Bifrost: Show Rune IR to inspect its language-neutral .rune form and get a conservative starter RQL query. Run that query from the editor, browse typed results grouped by file, and jump to the exact source range. The extension also provides definitions, references, hover, rename, symbols, hierarchy, diagnostics, completion, and other LSP features.

Use the Same Analyzer from the CLI

Run saved RQL or JSON queries directly, or call the same named tools exposed over MCP for shell scripts and reproducible analysis workflows.

Language Coverage

Bifrost includes analyzers for C, C++, C#, Go, Java, JavaScript, Kotlin, PHP, Python, Ruby, Rust, Scala, and TypeScript. See the capability matrix for the supported analysis and precision boundaries in each language.

Documentation

The public documentation site lives in docs/ and is published at bifrost.brokk.ai.

Useful starting points:

• Choose the right Bifrost interface
• Third-party notices
• Install Bifrost
• Evaluate Bifrost in ten minutes
• MCP server and toolsets
• LSP server
• CLI usage
• Code querying

Run the docs site locally with:

cd docs
npm install
npm run dev

GitHub Pages publication is handled by .github/workflows/docs.yml. Release tag builds publish both the latest docs site and a versioned snapshot under versions/<tag>/.

License and Commercial Use

Bifrost is licensed under LGPL-3.0-or-later and may be used in research, internal systems, hosted services, and commercial products. The integration and distribution boundary determines your obligations. Read License and Use Cases for practical subprocess, linked-library, hosted-service, and redistribution examples. That guide is an orientation, not legal advice; the license text controls.

Contributing

For local development, test commands, repository-local Python workflow, and release tagging, see CONTRIBUTING.md.