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Overview

CodeAlive lets you search and analyze code across multiple repositories simultaneously. Group related repos into workspaces — for example, all backend services, or your entire platform — and query them as a single unit. This is essential for microservices architectures, monorepo setups, and organizations with code spread across many repositories.

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Setting Up

1

Connect Your Providers

In the CodeAlive dashboard:
  1. Navigate to Providers
  2. Connect your GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket account
  3. Authorize CodeAlive to access your repositories
2

Import Repositories

  1. Go to Data Sources
  2. Click Import Repositories
  3. Select the repositories you want to index
  4. Wait for initial indexing (5-15 minutes per repository)
3

Create Workspaces

Group related repositories into workspaces:
  1. Go to Workspaces in the dashboard
  2. Click Create Workspace
  3. Give it a name (e.g., “backend-services”, “platform-team”)
  4. Add repositories to the workspace

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Workspaces

Workspaces let you group repositories and query them together. This is useful when:
  • Your backend is split across multiple services
  • You want to search across a team’s repositories
  • You need to trace data flows between services

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Querying Workspaces

Use the workspace: prefix to search across all repos in a workspace: 
# Search across all backend services
python scripts/search.py "error handling patterns" workspace:backend-team

# Chat about the whole platform
python scripts/chat.py "How do services communicate?" workspace:platform

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Querying Individual Repositories

Target specific repositories by name: 
# Search one repo
python scripts/search.py "JWT validation" auth-service

# Search multiple repos
python scripts/search.py "user model" auth-service user-service billing-service
When searching across repositories, CodeAlive understands relationships between services: 
"How does the auth service communicate with the user service?"
"Find all API contracts between frontend and backend"
"Show me shared database models across services"
"Trace the order flow from API to payment to notification"

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Data Sources

The get_data_sources tool lists all available repositories and workspaces:
TypeDescriptionExample
RepositorySingle codebasemy-backend-api
WorkspaceGroup of repositoriesworkspace:backend-team
Use get_data_sources to discover what’s available before searching: 
python scripts/datasources.py          # Ready-to-use sources
python scripts/datasources.py --all    # All (including processing)

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Best Practices

Organize by Team

Create workspaces per team or domain (backend, frontend, infrastructure)

Keep Repos Synced

Regularly sync repositories in the dashboard for accurate cross-repo analysis

Scope Searches

Use specific repos for targeted queries, workspaces for cross-cutting concerns

Name Clearly

Use descriptive workspace names that match your team’s vocabulary

Semantic Search

Search across repos by meaning and intent

Codebase Chat

Ask questions across your entire codebase

MCP Integration

Connect multi-repo to your AI assistant

Dashboard

Manage repositories and workspaces