LocalLens + Cursor

Add LocalLens to Cursor as an MCP server so Cursor can search, index, and ask questions about your local files.

Prerequisites

pip install "locallens[mcp]"
locallens index ~/my-project   # index something first

Configure Cursor

Add the following to .cursor/mcp.json in your project (or ~/.cursor/mcp.json globally):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "locallens": {
      "command": "locallens",
      "args": ["serve", "--mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Reload Cursor. Open the MCP tools panel -- you should see locallens_search, locallens_ask, locallens_index, locallens_status, and locallens_files.

Example prompts

• "Find files in this repo that deal with authentication"
• "What does the payment module do? Cite the files."
• "Search for API endpoint definitions, excluding tests"
• "Ask: how is caching configured in this codebase?"

Cursor will call LocalLens tools automatically based on intent.

Tips

• Use query arithmetic: "auth +middleware -test" narrows the search direction in embedding space.
• Re-index after big code changes: tell Cursor to run locallens_index on your project root.
• For multi-project setups, start one MCP server per project using namespaces (locallens index ~/proj-a --namespace proj-a).

Links

• MCP tool reference
• Setup details