beacon

Beacon

Turn Claude Code into Cursor.
Semantic code search that understands your codebase — find code by meaning, not just string matching.

Quick Start · Usage · Models · Commands · Config · Examples

98.3% accuracy · 5x faster than grep · 20-query benchmark on a real codebase

Quick Start

1. Install Ollama (local embeddings, free)

brew install ollama
ollama serve &
ollama pull nomic-embed-text

2. Install the Beacon plugin

claude plugin marketplace add sagarmk/Claude-Code-Beacon-Plugin
claude plugin install beacon@claude-code-beacon-plugin

3. Start Claude Code

claude

That's it. On first session start, Beacon will:

1. Install npm dependencies automatically (native modules like better-sqlite3 — takes a few seconds)
2. Index your codebase in the background

No npm install, no manual setup. Just install and go.

Usage

After installing, Beacon indexes automatically on session start. Here's the essentials:

Force a full re-index

> /reindex

Deletes existing embeddings and rebuilds from scratch — useful after switching models or if the index gets stale.

Check index health

> /index

Beacon Index

● ● ● ● ●    nomic-embed-text · Ollama (local)
● ● ● ● ●    768 dims · 3.8 MB
● ● ● ● ●
● ● ● ● ●    Coverage: 100% (38/38 files)

              Indexed by extension
              ● .js  25 files
              ● .md  13 files

              Statistics
              Indexed files    38
              Total chunks     109
              Avg chunks/file  2.9
              Last sync        2 minutes ago

For a quick numeric summary:

> /index-status

{
  "files_indexed": 38,
  "total_chunks": 114,
  "last_sync": "2026-03-01T04:30:21.453Z",
  "embedding_model": "nomic-embed-text",
  "embedding_endpoint": "http://localhost:11434/v1"
}

Search your codebase

> /search-code "authentication flow"

[
  {
    "file": "src/middleware/auth.ts",
    "lines": "12-45",
    "similarity": "0.82",
    "score": "0.74",
    "preview": "export async function verifyAuth(req, res, next) {\n  const token = req.headers.authorization?.split(' ')[1];\n  ..."
  },
  {
    "file": "src/routes/login.ts",
    "lines": "8-32",
    "similarity": "0.78",
    "score": "0.65",
    "preview": "router.post('/login', async (req, res) => {\n  const { email, password } = req.body;\n  ..."
  }
]

Hybrid search combines semantic similarity (understands meaning), BM25 keyword matching, and identifier boosting — so searching "auth flow" finds code about authentication even if it never uses the word "auth".

Options: --top-k N (results count), --threshold F (min score), --path <dir> (scope to directory), --no-hybrid (pure vector search).

Embedding Models

Beacon runs on open-source models by default — no API keys, no cloud costs, fully local via Ollama.

To switch models, pull with Ollama and update your config:

ollama pull mxbai-embed-large

// .claude/beacon.json
{
  "embedding": {
    "model": "mxbai-embed-large",
    "dimensions": 1024,
    "query_prefix": ""
  }
}

Then run /reindex to rebuild with the new model.

Cloud Providers

For cloud-hosted embeddings, create .claude/beacon.json in your repo:

export OPENAI_API_KEY="sk-..."

{
  "embedding": {
    "api_base": "https://api.openai.com/v1",
    "model": "text-embedding-3-small",
    "api_key_env": "OPENAI_API_KEY",
    "dimensions": 1536,
    "batch_size": 100,
    "query_prefix": ""
  }
}

export VOYAGE_API_KEY="pa-..."

{
  "embedding": {
    "api_base": "https://api.voyageai.com/v1",
    "model": "voyage-code-3",
    "api_key_env": "VOYAGE_API_KEY",
    "dimensions": 1024,
    "batch_size": 50,
    "query_prefix": ""
  }
}