Woods Setup Guide

Follow these steps to set up Woods in a Rails application. Each step builds on the previous one. You can stop after Step 4 and still get value from the MCP servers without embeddings.

Step 1: Install the Gem

Add to your Rails app's Gemfile:

group :development do
  gem 'woods'
end

Install and run the generator:

bundle install
bundle exec rails generate woods:install

Docker variant:

docker compose exec app bundle install
docker compose exec app bundle exec rails generate woods:install

The generator creates config/initializers/woods.rb with default configuration.

Step 2: Choose a Storage Preset

Pick the preset that matches your environment:

Local (no external services): Uses in-memory vectors + SQLite + Ollama embeddings. Works offline, no cloud keys required.

# config/initializers/woods.rb
Woods.configure_with_preset(:local)

PostgreSQL + OpenAI: Uses pgvector for vector search + OpenAI embeddings. Requires PostgreSQL with the pgvector extension.

Woods.configure_with_preset(:postgresql)

Then install the pgvector extension and run migrations:

bundle exec rails generate woods:pgvector
bundle exec rails db:migrate

Production (Qdrant + OpenAI): Uses Qdrant for scalable vector search + OpenAI embeddings. Best for large codebases or shared team deployments.

Woods.configure_with_preset(:production)

Embedding-free (structural search only): Skip embeddings entirely — all Index Server tools work without them. Only codebase_retrieve requires an embedding provider.

Woods.configure do |config|
  config.output_dir = Rails.root.join('tmp/woods')
end

Step 3: Run Extraction

Run a full extraction from your Rails app root:

bundle exec rake woods:extract

Docker variant:

docker compose exec app bundle exec rake woods:extract

Extraction boots Rails, introspects all models/controllers/services/jobs, builds the dependency graph, enriches units with git metadata, and writes JSON output to tmp/woods/.

A typical mid-size Rails app (50–100 models) takes 10–30 seconds.

Step 4: Verify Extraction

Check counts and integrity:

bundle exec rake woods:stats
bundle exec rake woods:validate

Inspect the manifest directly:

cat tmp/woods/manifest.json

A healthy manifest looks like:

{
  "extracted_at": "2026-03-04T12:00:00Z",
  "total_units": 347,
  "counts": {
    "model": 42,
    "controller": 38,
    "service": 91,
    "job": 24
  }
}

If total_units is 0 or unexpectedly low, check Step 5 of the Diagnosis guide.

Step 5: Configure MCP Servers

Add both servers to your AI tool's MCP configuration.

Claude Code (.mcp.json in your Rails app root)

Local development (no Docker):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "codebase": {
      "command": "woods-mcp-start",
      "args": ["./tmp/woods"]
    },
    "rails-console": {
      "command": "bundle",
      "args": ["exec", "rake", "woods:console"],
      "cwd": "/path/to/your/rails-app"
    }
  }
}

Docker (embedded console — Tier 1 tools only):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "codebase": {
      "command": "woods-mcp-start",
      "args": ["./tmp/woods"]
    },
    "rails-console": {
      "command": "docker",
      "args": [
        "exec", "-i",
        "your_app_web_1",
        "bundle", "exec", "rake", "woods:console"
      ]
    }
  }
}

The Index Server always runs on the host reading volume-mounted JSON. Use the host-side path (./tmp/woods), not the container path (/app/tmp/woods).

Cursor / Windsurf (.cursor/mcp.json)

Same structure as Claude Code above — both tools use the same JSON format.

Step 6: Verify MCP Connection

Test the Index Server responds:

echo '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/list","params":{}}' | woods-mcp-start ./tmp/woods

You should see a JSON response listing the available tools. If you see an error instead, check that manifest.json exists in the path you provided.

Test the Console Server:

echo '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/list","params":{}}' | bundle exec rake woods:console

This should output the tool list and then hang (waiting for more input). Press Ctrl+C to exit. If it exits immediately, run bundle exec rake woods:console directly to see the error output.

Next Steps

• Run incremental extraction after code changes: bundle exec rake woods:incremental
• Set up CI extraction: see the GitHub Actions example in MCP_TOOL_COOKBOOK.md
• Enable Tier 2–4 console tools (diagnostics, SQL, Ruby eval): see CONSOLE_MCP_SETUP.md Option D
• Enable temporal snapshots for change tracking: set enable_snapshots: true in your initializer