Docs chevron_right Getting Started — Install Deslop's live LSP + MCP server

Getting Started

Deslop is a live duplicate-code analysis server — LSP + MCP, running in your workspace, streaming real-time clone signals to Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot, Continue, Codex, and your editor as code is being written. The preferred way to install it is the VS Code extension — the extension bundles the LSP server, the MCP server, and the CLI in one install.

The JetBrains plugin (Rider first, then IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm, WebStorm, RustRover, CLion) is in active development. Zed and Neovim are on the roadmap. Until those ship, the VSIX is the headline install, and the Homebrew tap / Scoop bucket are the CLI-only shortcuts.

Install (preferred) — VS Code extension

Install straight from the VS Code Marketplace. Nothing to download, no files to manage — pick whichever is closest to hand:

  • In VS Code: open Extensions (⇧⌘X / Ctrl+Shift+X), search Deslop, click Install.
  • Command line: code --install-extension nimblesite.deslop-live
  • Browser: open the Deslop.live Marketplace page and hit Install.

Then open a .cs / .rs / .py / .dart file. The live bubble is active immediately, and the Top Offenders tree populates as the file watcher fires.

The extension bundles native binaries for darwin-arm64, darwin-x64, linux-x64, linux-arm64, and win32-x64 — the right one is selected for you automatically.

Offline or air-gapped? Grab the .vsix from the latest GitHub release and install it via Extensions panel → … menu → Install from VSIX….

Install the CLI only (Homebrew / Scoop)

macOS / Linux (Homebrew)

brew install nimblesite/tap/deslop
deslop --version

Tap source: github.com/Nimblesite/homebrew-tap.

Windows (Scoop)

scoop bucket add nimblesite https://github.com/Nimblesite/scoop-bucket
scoop install deslop
deslop --version

Bucket source: github.com/Nimblesite/scoop-bucket.

Direct download

Grab the per-platform archive from the latest GitHub release and drop the binaries on your PATH.

Run the CLI

deslop .

That scans the current directory, writes three reports, and prints the top clusters to your terminal:

deslop-report.json   # canonical, agent-consumable
deslop-report.txt    # line-oriented plain text
deslop-report.html   # standalone, human-readable

Tune the threshold

Default minimum AST node count is chosen so trivial getters do not pollute the top of the report. Override per-run:

deslop . --min-nodes 20

Raise it for large codebases where you only want major duplication. Lower it when hunting micro-patterns.

Enable semantic detection — same behavior, different code (Type-4)

Structural and token passes are deterministic and run without network. Same-behavior matches (Type-4) — same behaviour, different syntax — require embeddings. Embeddings are off by default:

deslop . --embeddings auto

auto probes the local Ollama provider and falls back with a warning if it's unreachable. Use --embeddings required to hard-fail when the provider can't be contacted. The default model is nomic-embed-text; any Ollama embedding model selectable via --embedding-model.

See How It Works for the fusion math.

Exclude noise

Generated code and build outputs are filtered by default. Add .deslop.toml only for project-specific dependencies, migrations, or training-set code:

[defaults]
exclude = [
  "**/bin/**",
  "**/obj/**",
  "**/node_modules/**",
  "**/target/**",
  "**/*.Designer.cs",
]

report_hide = [
  "**/*.g.cs",
]

exclude skips parsing entirely. report_hide parses but omits from the final ranking — useful for training-set code you still want in the cache.

Gate CI on a duplication threshold

By default deslop exits 0 no matter how much duplication it finds — it reports, it does not judge, so it never breaks a build you did not ask it to gate. Opt into a gate and it exits 3 (failing the build) when repo-wide duplication crosses your ceiling. Pass a flag for a one-off, or commit the ceiling so local runs, CI, and agents all share one number:

deslop . --fail-over 5.0          # exit 3 if more than 5% of analysed LOC is duplicated
# .deslop.toml
[threshold]
max_duplication_percent = 5.0

--fail-over overrides the config key; --fail-over 0 fails on any duplication; --no-fail-over clears the gate for a single local run. The full exit-code table lives in Output Formats, and a ready-to-paste GitHub Actions job is in For AI.

What to do next

  1. Read How It Works to understand the ranking formula and the live pipeline.
  2. Read AI Integration to wire deslop-mcp into Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, Continue, or Codex.
  3. Read Output Formats before parsing the JSON yourself.
  4. Read VS Code Cluster Panel when you need the meaning of a panel label, score, or action.
  5. Read For AI if you are (or are configuring) a coding agent — the operating manual for .deslop.toml, CI gating, and parsing the JSON report.