Text-based editing tools fail on Clojure in a specific and repetitive way. Repairing delimiters before evaluation and editing at the level of forms is the fix — and the REPL connection means the change gets tried, not just written.
An MCP server that connects an LLM client to a Clojure project through nREPL, plus editing tools that understand Clojure's structure instead of treating it as text. Parinfer, cljfmt and clj-rewrite do the work under the hood.
- Code evaluation: `clojure_eval` runs in the current namespace, with an optional `port` for multi-REPL workflows, and `list_nrepl_ports` discovers running nREPL servers on the machine
- Clojure-aware editing: `clojure_edit` for structure-aware changes to forms including defmethod, and `clojure_edit_replace_sexp` for modifying expressions inside a function
- General editing that repairs itself: `file_edit` runs parinfer repair after the edit when needed, and `file_write` writes complete files with safety checks
- Read-only exploration: `LS` for a recursive tree, `read_file` with a collapsed view showing only function signatures for large Clojure files, `grep` and `glob_files`
- `bash` for running tests, git commands and file operations on the host
- Agent tools that need their own API keys: `dispatch_agent` launches read-only agents for multi-step exploration, and `architect` handles technical planning
- Experimental additions: `scratch_pad` as a persistent structured workspace, and `code_critique` for iterative review
Clojure and Java — JDK 17 or later. Ripgrep is optional but highly recommended for `grep` and `glob_files` performance. Install with `clojure -Ttools install-latest :lib io.github.bhauman/clojure-mcp :as mcp`, which makes `clojure -Tmcp start` available from any directory. An nREPL must be running in your project for the evaluation tools to connect to. How much of the toolchain you use depends on your client: with a CLI assistant that already has good file editing and shell tools, keep those and use this mainly for REPL integration and Clojure-aware edits; with a desktop chat app, use the full set. The agent tools require LLM API keys of their own.
One command — clojure -Ttools install-latest :lib io.github.bhauman/clojure-mcp :as mcp