MCP Symbol Indexer Cuts Tokens by 93.7% Compared to grep

IUM indexes a codebase and exposes it as an MCP tool usable in Claude Code and Cursor.

• It performs a two-pass AST walk to collect symbol events such as definitions, call sites, and mutations, storing them in SQLite.
• On top of that, it provides precise file:line coordinates, call graph tracing, and semantic search.

Comparing 4 queries on DataFusion (a 1,538-file Rust codebase):

• Grep: 82,645 tokens
• IUM: 5,190 tokens
• The result: 15.9x fewer tokens, roughly 93.7% savings

grep is faster in speed, but the more calls an agent makes, the more IUM wins on token cost.

Supported languages are Rust, Python, TypeScript, CSS, HTML, and all processing happens locally.