| name | repo-research |
| description | Researches source code, issues, PRs, releases, and git history in external repositories on GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket. Use when exploring how a library implements something, searching code across public repos, reading files from a known repo, or checking issues, PRs, and release info. Do not use for local codebase search or library documentation lookups. |
repo-research
Defaults by intent:
- Concept question in one GitHub repo ("how does lib X do Y") →
mcp__plugin_ora_morph__github_codebase_search. Citations are real; the synthesis can misread the code — verify by reading cited files before relaying load-bearing conclusions.
- Exact-identifier search across repos, GitLab/Bitbucket targets, symbol navigation, git history → Sourcegraph MCP (
keyword_search, nls_search, read_file, go_to_definition, find_references, commit_search, diff_search).
- Deep dive (3+ files, branching follow-ups, ast-grep) →
bash scripts/git-clone.sh <repo> — shallow-clones into a ~/.cache/clio-repos/ cache and echoes the path. Accepts owner/repo, HTTPS, or SSH; --refresh for the latest commit.
- Issues / PRs / releases / single known file →
gh CLI: gh issue view, gh pr view, gh release view|list, gh api repos/.../contents/<path>.
Don't WebFetch github.com or raw.githubusercontent.com — gh returns the same content structured. The releases page is the sharpest trap: its relative timestamps ("2 weeks ago") get hallucinated into training-era dates.
Sourcegraph specifics:
keyword_search is AND + literal — one wrong term zeroes results; use for concrete identifiers. nls_search is OR + stemming, not semantic — pass 2–5 extracted keywords, not sentences.- Anchor repo filters:
repo:^github\.com/foo/bar$ — unanchored repo:foo/bar matches forks too.
- Search results annotated
repo@revision: pass repo and revision separately to read_file, or you silently read default-branch HEAD.
- Code newer than ~24 h isn't indexed; unindexed repo or 401/403 → fall back to git-clone.
