node-code-mode

One MCP tool in front of all your MCP servers. Cloudflare's Code Mode pattern, running on Node instead of Workers.

npx -y node-code-mode --stats

Status: published on npm, running on my own machine. Unpolished in places, but every number below was measured on a real config.

The problem

Every MCP server you connect gets its schemas pasted into the context on every request. From my own config, with four servers turned off:

8 MCP servers      113 tools   174,406 bytes   ~43,602 tokens
node-code-mode       1 tool      6,524 bytes    ~1,631 tokens

43k tokens before the model has done anything, and it grows with each server you install (github alone was 120 KB). The --stats command below measures your own config instead of trusting mine.

With the code tool the model writes one program per task:

const files = await codemode.fs_glob({ pattern: '*/package.json' });
const stale = [];
for (const f of files) {
  const pkg = JSON.parse(await codemode.fs_read({ path: f }));
  if (!pkg.description) stale.push(f);
}
return { total: files.length, stale };

One round trip, one small object back. Everything else stays on disk and in the process.

Install

npx -y node-code-mode

Claude Desktop / Claude Code:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "codemode": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "node-code-mode"]
    }
  }
}

OpenCode:

{
  "mcp": {
    "codemode": {
      "type": "local",
      "command": ["npx", "-y", "node-code-mode"],
      "enabled": true
    }
  }
}

Cursor and VS Code take the same shape (servers in .vscode/mcp.json, mcpServers in .mcp.json).

Then stop advertising the servers you don't want in context. They remain reachable through codemode.mcp_call({ server, tool, args }). Disabled means hidden, not gone.

The audit

--stats reads your real config, boots each server, and counts what you're actually sending:

  server                    tools     bytes   tokens
  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
  · higgsfield                 48    182757    45689  ██████████████████████████████
    github                     44    120572    30143  ████████████████████
    director                   26     19725     4931  ███
  · playwright                 24     18502     4626  ███
  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
  TOTAL POOLED                282    441280   110320

  · = not advertised (still reachable through codemode.mcp_call)

  ADVERTISED: 113 tools, 174,406 bytes ≈ 43,602 tokens
  WITH CODEMODE: 1 tool ≈ 1,631 tokens

  You are paying ~43,602 tokens per turn for tools you did not call.

--stats --json for anything that isn't a human.

Sandbox API

Every function takes one object. All of it hangs off a single codemode namespace inside the sandbox.

group	functions
shell / files	shell, fs_read, fs_write, fs_append, fs_exists, fs_stat, fs_list, fs_glob, fs_grep, fs_remove, fs_mkdir
network	http, http_json
MCP	mcp_list, mcp_tools, mcp_call
Cloudflare	cf_get, cf_post, cf_patch, cf_put, cf_del, cf_request (only with CLOUDFLARE_API_TOKEN)
Moli	moli_fetch (only with MOLI_BIN)
globals	sleep(ms), env, ROOT, log()

Whatever the program returns is the only thing sent back. console.log is captured in logs, never returned to the model, so progress has to be part of the return value.

Config

Looks for the first of these:

1. --config <path> or CODEMODE_CONFIG
2. ./.mcp.json
3. ~/.config/opencode/opencode.jsonc
4. Claude Desktop config, any platform

It reads mcpServers (Claude), mcp (OpenCode) and servers (VS Code), including JSONC comments and {env:VAR} interpolation.

npx -y node-code-mode --print-config

env	effect
CODEMODE_ROOT	base directory for relative fs paths (default: home)
CODEMODE_TIMEOUT_MS	wall clock limit per call (default 120000)
CODEMODE_DEBUG=1	forward pooled-server stderr
CLOUDFLARE_API_TOKEN, CLOUDFLARE_ACCOUNT_ID	enables cf_*
MOLI_BIN	enables moli_fetch

Security

Each call gets a fresh Node child process that exits afterwards. The sandbox is node:vm with no require, import, process or filesystem; the proxies above are its entire capability set.

node:vm is not a security boundary. Escapes exist, and the proxies are real: shell runs commands, fs_write writes files, http opens sockets. The model can do anything you can do in a terminal, which is the same deal every coding agent offers. If that's not acceptable, run the whole thing in a container.

No credentials are read from disk. They come from the environment.

Numbers

Same task both ways, three runs, median, Windows 11 / Node 22:

	round trips	bytes to the model	tokens	wall time
5 tool calls	5	41,812	10,453	2,240 ms
1 code call	1	145	36	2,733 ms

About half a second slower locally, 288× less context. Each skipped round trip is a full model call, so on a real task the difference is seconds, not milliseconds.

Limitations

• No streaming. One result at the end; long jobs look like a hang.
• Plain JavaScript. No TypeScript, no imports.
• Cold start around 1.5 s, then 250 to 500 ms per call from process spawn and IPC.
• stdio on the server side only. Upstream servers can be stdio or HTTP.
• Pinned to @cloudflare/codemode@0.5.5. Upstream is Workers-first and a minor bump can add a cloudflare:workers import that Node cannot load (#2142). Upgrade deliberately and run the tests.

Prior art

@cloudflare/codemode supplies the type generation, tool description, result unwrapping and truncation. This repo supplies the executor and the server. The protocol idea comes from UTCP's code-mode, which is more ambitious and framework-agnostic.

MIT.