Devrig CLI

Independent open-source project. MCP Steroid and Devrig are independent open-source projects. They are not made by, endorsed by, or affiliated with JetBrains s.r.o. IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm, GoLand, WebStorm, Rider, CLion, and JetBrains are trademarks of JetBrains s.r.o.

What is Devrig?

Devrig is a small standalone command-line tool that connects your AI Agent to a JetBrains IDE running MCP Steroid — with no manual MCP configuration.

It does three jobs:

  1. Registers MCP Steroid with your coding agent. devrig install <agent> adds devrig as an mcp-steroid stdio MCP server in Claude, Codex, or Gemini.
  2. Bridges your agent to every running IDE at once. When your agent launches it as a stdio MCP server (devrig mcp), devrig discovers all the IntelliJ-based IDEs running on your machine — across projects — and routes the agent’s MCP Steroid calls to any of them through a single connection. One bridge, every IDE.
  3. Provisions an IDE. devrig backend download|start|stop downloads and runs a managed IntelliJ backend under devrig’s home directory, so an agent can spin up an IDE with no manual setup.

One bridge, every IDE

A single devrig mcp process connects your AI Agent to all the IntelliJ-family IDEs running on your machine at once — each open on a different project — and can download and start more on demand:

One devrig bridge connects your AI Agent to all running IDEs at once — and can start more
One devrig process bridges your agent to every IntelliJ-family IDE running on the machine — and can start more.

Devrig is a Java application and requires Java 25 to run. It does not bundle a JVM: java must be on the PATH, or JAVA_HOME / DEVRIG_JAVA_HOME must point at a Java 25 home.

Install

Register devrig as the mcp-steroid stdio MCP server in your coding agent:

devrig install claude
devrig install codex
devrig install gemini

The agent must be one of claude, codex, or gemini. After a successful install, devrig prints the agent it registered, the JAVA_HOME it recorded, and the exact stdio command (devrig mcp) the agent will run.

Commands

Run devrig --help (or devrig -h) for the authoritative usage, and devrig --version (or devrig -v) for the version.

devrig mcp

Runs devrig as an MCP stdio server. This is the command your coding agent launches after devrig install — you normally don’t run it by hand. While running, it discovers IDEs and bridges the agent’s MCP Steroid calls to them.

The legacy spelling devrig mpc is still accepted as a hidden alias, so older agent registrations keep working. Use devrig mcp for new setups.

devrig install claude|codex|gemini

Registers this devrig binary as the mcp-steroid stdio MCP server in the selected agent.

devrig backend [--json]

Lists discovered backends (with versions), grouped as MCP Steroid backends, other/incompatible IDEs, and installed-but-not-running (startable) backends. Per-backend open projects are listed by devrig project. --json emits a single machine-readable object on stdout (pipe through jq); the default is human-readable text.

devrig project [--json]

Lists open projects across all discovered backends. --json emits a single machine-readable object on stdout; the default is human-readable text.

devrig backend download [<id>] [--version <v>] [--json]

With no id, lists the IDEs available for download. With an id, downloads and installs a managed backend under devrig’s home directory. The id accepts <product>, <product>:<version>, or <product>-<version> — for example idea-community, idea-community:2026.1, or idea-community-2026.1.

Known product ids: idea-ultimate, idea-community, pycharm-pro, pycharm-community, goland, webstorm, rider, clion, android-studio.

devrig backend start [<id>] [--version <v>] [--json]

With no id, lists installed backends. With an id, starts an installed managed backend in detached mode and prints its pid, log, and config paths. A product-only id prefers the highest locally installed version.

devrig backend stop [<id>] [--version <v>] [--json]

With no id, lists currently running backends. With an id, stops a managed backend by its pid file. A product-only id prefers the highest locally installed version.

devrig backend provision [<id>] [--json]

With no id, lists port-discovered IDEs that can be provisioned. With an id (for example port-63342), prints manual MCP Steroid plugin install instructions for that IDE.

Options and environment

Options that apply to every mode:

FlagEffect
--debugEnable verbose stderr logging (DEBUG).
--jsonEmit JSON output where supported (backend, project, and the backend download/start/stop subcommands).
--help, -hPrint help and exit.
--version, -vPrint the devrig version and exit.

Environment variables:

VariableEffect
DEVRIG_JAVA_HOMEJDK/JRE home used to launch devrig (devrig needs Java 25). Overrides JAVA_HOME for the devrig process only.
DEVRIG_JVM_OPTSExtra JVM options for the devrig launch — for example -Xmx512m.

Example: an agent provisions an IDE

This is the typical end-to-end flow where an agent gets a working IDE with no manual setup:

# 1. Register devrig with your agent (once)
devrig install claude

# 2. Download a managed IntelliJ IDEA Community backend (if not yet installed)
devrig backend download idea-community

Once downloaded, the agent can open a project immediately — steroid_open_project detects the installed (not-yet-running) backend as a startable candidate, starts it automatically (blocking until reachable), and opens the project in a single call. No separate devrig backend start step is needed.

To stop the backend when done:

devrig backend stop idea-community

devrig backend start <id> / devrig backend stop <id> still exist for explicit lifecycle control when you prefer it.

Next Steps