github-codebase-search

Semantic search for public GitHub repositories powered by MorphLLM — an RL-trained subagent that runs parallel grep+read calls against the GitHub API to answer natural language questions about code. No cloning required.

Requires MORPH_API_KEY environment variable.

When to Use

• Understanding how a library or framework works internally (e.g., "how does Next.js resolve middleware?")
• Investigating upstream bugs or behavior in open-source dependencies
• Learning from reference implementations in well-known repos
• Tracing code paths in a repo you haven't cloned locally
• Exploring how an OSS project is structured or architected

When NOT to Use

• Questions about the local codebase — use codebase-search
• Private repositories (GitHub API access required)
• Simple documentation lookup — use context7
• Simple GitHub UI browsing (viewing READMEs, issues, PRs)

Decision Rule

Is the code on GitHub and not cloned locally? Use github-codebase-search. Is it in the local repo? Use codebase-search.

Task	Tool
How does Next.js resolve API routes?	github-codebase-search
How does our auth middleware work?	codebase-search
How does Prisma handle migrations internally?	github-codebase-search
Where is the database config in our repo?	codebase-search
What does React's reconciler do with fibers?	github-codebase-search
What does the React docs say about useEffect?	context7

Workflow

DO NOT read script source code. Run scripts directly and use --help for usage.

Run a Semantic Search

python3 scripts/github-codebase-search.py search "<natural language query>" --repo <owner/repo>

• query — a natural language question about the code
• --repo — GitHub repository in owner/repo format (e.g., vercel/next.js)
• --url — alternative: full GitHub URL (e.g., https://github.com/vercel/next.js)
• Must provide either --repo or --url

# Search by owner/repo
python3 scripts/github-codebase-search.py search "how does the router resolve middleware" --repo vercel/next.js

# Search by GitHub URL
python3 scripts/github-codebase-search.py search "how does the router resolve middleware" --url https://github.com/vercel/next.js

# Search a specific branch
python3 scripts/github-codebase-search.py search "how are migrations handled" --repo prisma/prisma --branch main

# Increase timeout for large repos
python3 scripts/github-codebase-search.py search "trace the build pipeline" --repo facebook/react --timeout 180

Run python3 scripts/github-codebase-search.py --help for full usage.

Rules

• Write queries as natural language questions — "How does the router resolve middleware chains?" works far better than "router middleware", because the search agent plans its own strategy based on your question.
• Be specific about what you want to know — "How does Prisma handle relation loading in findMany?" beats "Prisma relations".
• Provide the owner/repo or URL — the tool needs to know which GitHub repo to search.
• Default timeout is 120s — for large repos, increase with --timeout 180 or higher.