MCP server

When laravel/mcp is installed, Richter registers a local MCP server named richter. A coding agent can then triage changes without shelling out to Artisan.

Tools

Six read-only tools:

Tool	What it returns
locate	Where a symbol or file is, with no walk — the node id impact and trace need.
impact	Blast radius plus reached entry surfaces of a symbol.
trace	Shortest call-direction path between two symbols.
detect-changes	Advisory impact of the current branch diff.
affected-tests	The test selection the diff warrants.
task-slice	The surfaces this task owns, with the hazards, findings and tests that go with them.

detect-changes takes base and head. head defaults to HEAD, which includes the uncommitted working tree; naming a commit analyses that committed state instead. An agent working mid-feature against a task parent needs it — the CLI has had --head since the option existed, and without the argument the tool could only ever read a range ending at the working tree.

For affected-tests, determinable: false means run the full suite. Every non-determinable cause returns that shape with its reasons, never a tool error.

Every tool returns MCP structured content in the same vocabulary and shapes as the CLI --json output, so an agent can branch on fields instead of parsing prose. Because the MCP session holds the graph cache in memory, repeated tool calls in one review do not rebuild the graph.

Bounded by default

impact and detect-changes cap their structured content: the breadth arrays (callers, dependencies, entry points, association surfaces, and their kin) cut at 15 entries in their existing order, and the per-entry maps restrict to the entry points still shown. A full document on a hub symbol runs to megabytes — far past what an agent can carry beside its task — so the default response keeps the nearest hops and the first surfaces, which are the rows a reviewer reads first anyway.

The bound is honest: bounded is true whenever anything was held back, and every capped array carries its full count in a …Total field (callersTotal, entryPointsTotal, and so on; entryPointKeepSet carries keptTotal inside the object). An empty section still means "not found", never "safe" — the cap changes how much is listed, not what is claimed. hazards, verification, and the risk verdict are never capped.

Two optional arguments drill down:

• full: true returns the uncapped lists and maps. The response still carries the bounded/…Total fields, so it is the CLI --json document plus those fields, not byte-identical to it.
• entries: [...] names entry points (copied from a previous response) to keep visible past the cap, in entryPoints and in every per-entry map. Unknown names are ignored; full wins when both are passed.

locate bounds itself the same way, with one argument instead of two: limit defaults to 15, total carries the uncapped count, and bounded says whether anything was held back. Raise limit to total for the rest. The richter:locate command applies no default cap — a script has a disk, not a context window — so its --json document is complete unless you pass --limit. See richter:locate.

The CLI --json output is unaffected: it remains the complete, uncapped machine contract — a script has a disk, not a context window.

Resources

Three read-only resources cover orientation without a tool call:

Resource	URI	Content
Entry points	richter://graph/entry-points	Every statically-known entry surface (routes, commands, schedules, Livewire/Filament/Nova components) with kind and file:line where known.
Graph stats	richter://graph/stats	Node and edge counts by edge type, plus the honesty flags (hasUnparseableFiles, hasUnresolvedDispatches) and unresolvedDispatchSites, which names each unfollowable dispatch by file, line and dispatching member.
Config	richter://config	The effective analysis configuration: base ref, root namespace, entry-point roots, dispatch helpers, feature-gate wrappers, payload-parity settings, the frontend bridge, whether the cache is enabled, and the parallel switch.

Supported versions

The supported range is laravel/mcp ^0.8||^0.9||^1.0. composer.json carries a matching conflict entry, so an unvalidated release fails at resolution time rather than at boot.

When laravel/boost is installed, laravel/mcp 1.0 needs Boost v2.9 or later. An older Boost caps laravel/mcp at ^0.9, which Richter also supports.

Registering the server

Point Claude Code, Cursor, or any MCP client at the Artisan entry point, for example in .mcp.json:

{
    "mcpServers": {
        "richter": {
            "command": "php",
            "args": ["artisan", "mcp:start", "richter"]
        }
    }
}

The /richter-setup skill registers this for you if you ask it to; see Set up your project.