🍎📚 Cupertino
Apple Documentation Crawler & MCP Server
A Swift-based tool to crawl, index, and serve Apple's developer documentation to AI agents via the Model Context Protocol (MCP).
What is Cupertino?
Cupertino is a local, structured, AI-ready documentation system for Apple platforms. It:
- Crawls Apple Developer documentation, Swift.org, Swift Evolution proposals, Human Interface Guidelines, Apple Archive legacy guides, and Swift package metadata
- Indexes everything into a fast, searchable SQLite FTS5 database with BM25 ranking
- Serves documentation to AI agents like Claude via the Model Context Protocol
- Provides offline access to 302,424+ documentation pages across 307 frameworks
Why Build This?
- No more hallucinations: AI agents get accurate, up-to-date Apple API documentation
- Offline development: Work with full documentation without internet access
- Deterministic search: Same query always returns same results
- Local control: Own your documentation, inspect the database, script workflows
- AI-first design: Built specifically for AI agent integration via MCP
Quick Start
Note: When building from source, commands must be run from the
Packagesdirectory. The one-command install works from anywhere.
Requirements
- macOS 15+ (Sequoia)
- ~2-3 GB disk space for full documentation
Building from source additionally requires Swift 6.2+ and Xcode 16.0+
Installation
One-command install (recommended):
bash <(curl -sSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mihaelamj/cupertino/main/install.sh)
This downloads a pre-built, signed, and notarized universal binary, installs it to /usr/local/bin, and downloads the documentation databases.
Or with Homebrew:
brew tap mihaelamj/tap
brew install cupertino
cupertino setup
Or build from source:
git clone https://github.com/mihaelamj/cupertino.git
cd cupertino
# Using Makefile (recommended)
make build # Build release binary
sudo make install # Install to /usr/local/bin
# Or using Swift Package Manager directly
cd Packages
swift build -c release
sudo ln -sf "$(pwd)/.build/release/cupertino" /usr/local/bin/cupertino
Demo Video: Watch on YouTube
Quick Reference
# Quick Setup (Recommended) - download pre-built databases (~30 seconds)
cupertino setup # Download databases from GitHub
cupertino serve # Start MCP server
# Alternative: Build from GitHub (~45 minutes)
cupertino save --remote # Stream and build locally
# Or fetch documentation yourself
cupertino fetch --type docs # Apple Developer Documentation
cupertino fetch --type swift # Swift.org documentation
cupertino fetch --type evolution # Swift Evolution proposals
cupertino fetch --type packages # Swift package metadata
cupertino fetch --type package-docs # Swift package READMEs
cupertino fetch --type code # Sample code from Apple (requires auth)
cupertino fetch --type samples # Sample code from GitHub (recommended)
cupertino fetch --type archive # Apple Archive programming guides
cupertino fetch --type hig # Human Interface Guidelines
cupertino fetch --type availability # Platform availability data
cupertino fetch --type all # All types in parallel
# Build indexes
cupertino save # Build documentation search index (from local files)
cupertino save --remote # Build from GitHub (no local files needed)
cupertino index # Index sample code for search
# Start server
cupertino # Start MCP server (default command)
cupertino serve # Start MCP server (explicit)
Instant Setup (Recommended)
# Download pre-built databases from GitHub (~30 seconds)
cupertino setup
# Start MCP server
cupertino serve
Alternative: Build from GitHub
# Stream and build locally (~45 minutes)
# Use this if you want to build the database yourself
cupertino save --remote
# Start MCP server
cupertino serve
Manual Setup (Advanced)
# Download Apple documentation (~12+ days for 301,000+ pages)
# Takes time due to 0.05s default delay between requests
cupertino fetch --type docs --max-pages 15000