RuvNet Brain

What it does

RuvNet Brain is a plugin for Claude Code and Codex. It gives a coding assistant a searchable local copy of the public source code and documentation of Reuven Cohen's (rUv's) RuvNet projects, including Ruflo, RuVector/RVF, AgentDB, agentic-flow, Agentic QE and SPARC. When the assistant asks a question, the server returns matching passages, each labelled with its repository and file path, so an answer can be checked against real code. Search runs on your machine over a downloaded knowledge bundle. It does not call an embedding API.

The README names one MCP tool, search_ruvnet. The MCP shell at version 4.7.6 (plugin/mcp/server.mjs) registers four. Next to search_ruvnet (6 documents by default, set with k), three tools work with a fixed list of seven RuvNet command-line programs: ruflo, claude-flow, agentic-flow, agentic-qe, ruvector, agent-browser and ruv-swarm. One looks up a program's latest version on the npm registry, one runs a program's --help, and one runs the program with arguments you give it. The run tool refuses to start unless that program's help was read successfully in the last 24 hours.

The npm package is an installer (npx ruvnet-brain@latest). It downloads the knowledge bundle to ~/.cache/ruvnet-brain, installs the local reader and registers the plugins with the hosts it finds. The plugins also bring skills, lifecycle hooks, a local console (/rnbc) and an optional scheduled updater.

What it needs

Node.js 18 or newer and npm, with Claude Code or Codex installed. Runs on macOS, Linux or Windows. Run npx ruvnet-brain@latest once. It downloads a knowledge bundle of about 500 MB to ~/.cache/ruvnet-brain (RUVNET_BRAIN_HOME changes the location) and registers the plugin. On first run, a ranking model is fetched from HuggingFace unless it is already cached. ruvnet_cli_help and ruvnet_cli_run need the RuvNet CLI in question to be installed and on PATH.

Limits

It searches only the indexed public RuvNet material, as of the snapshot in the bundle you have. A code release can ship an older corpus, and the 4.6.0 baseline was 199 stores and 162,680 source chunks. The CLI tools work only with the seven programs named in the code, and each run times out after 30 seconds unless RUVNET_BRAIN_MANAGED_CLI_TIMEOUT_MS is set. The makers say the hooks and skills encourage the assistant to read source but cannot make it follow that source or write correct code. The README header says version 4.6.2, while npm carries 4.7.6.

Who it suits

It suits developers who build on rUv's RuvNet projects in Claude Code or Codex and want answers tied to files in those repositories. If you do not use the RuvNet stack, it offers nothing, because the index covers only RuvNet material. It is also a heavy install: an installer, a large download, plugins and hooks rather than a single command. Because ruvnet_cli_run can run RuvNet CLIs, people who only want lookups can leave those programs uninstalled.