Bookworm MCP Server

Bookworm – An MCP Server for Rust Documentation

Bookworm is a purpose‑built Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that brings the rich, structured information from Rust’s docs.rs ecosystem directly into AI‑driven workflows. By exposing a set of high‑level tools, it lets language models query crate metadata, source code, and documentation without leaving the conversational context. This eliminates the need for developers to manually browse crates.io or parse HTML, enabling seamless code‑review assistance, rapid API discovery, and automated documentation generation.

At its core, Bookworm orchestrates four complementary libraries. downloads a crate’s documentation snapshot to disk; builds a lightweight SQLite index over that snapshot, enabling fast text search; performs queries against the indexed data; and exposes these capabilities as MCP tools. The server is intentionally lightweight, running as a single binary that can be launched locally or in containerized environments. Once registered with an MCP‑aware client (for example, Claude.ai), the model can invoke tools such as or with a single command, receiving structured JSON responses that can be rendered or further processed.

Key features include:

• Crate discovery – returns matching crate names and URIs, making it trivial to locate the exact dependency a user needs.
• Item lookup – provides detailed signatures, documentation snippets, and related resources for functions, structs, enums, and traits.
• Resource navigation – The tool supports a URI scheme that mirrors the docs.rs layout, allowing retrieval of crate versions, metadata, README files, item lists, and even raw source code.
• Local caching – By storing documentation locally and indexing it, Bookworm removes network latency and provides deterministic query results even when offline.

Real‑world use cases span the full software development lifecycle. A developer can ask an AI assistant, “Show me how to serialize a custom type with serde,” and the model will return the exact function signature, relevant documentation, and source code example from the latest serde crate. In continuous integration pipelines, Bookworm can validate that all public APIs are documented or generate changelogs by comparing indexed versions. Educators can embed the server in interactive learning environments, letting students query documentation without leaving the chat interface.

Bookworm’s standout advantage lies in its tight coupling between local data and AI tooling. Because the server serves pre‑indexed, offline documentation, responses are instant and reproducible, which is critical for production tooling and security‑sensitive contexts. Its modular design also means teams can extend or replace individual components (e.g., swap SQLite for a full‑text search engine) without breaking the MCP contract. For developers looking to embed Rust documentation directly into AI assistants, Bookworm offers a ready‑made, highly efficient bridge that turns static docs into dynamic, queryable knowledge.