IDE-grade Kotlin code intelligence — anywhere you need it

Kast gives you the same semantic analysis that powers IntelliJ IDEA, but as a headless daemon with structured JSON output. Run it in your terminal, pipe it through CI, hand it to an LLM agent, or spin it up on a cloud VM. Every command returns machine-readable JSON that tells you exactly what the Kotlin compiler knows — symbol identity, caller relationships, reference exhaustiveness, and conflict-safe edit plans.

flowchart LR
    A["Your terminal, CI, or agent"] --> B["kast CLI"]
    B --> C["JSON-RPC"]
    C --> D["Standalone daemon\n(any machine with Java 21)"]
    C --> E["IntelliJ plugin\n(reuses IDE index)"]
    D --> F["K2 Analysis API"]
    E --> F
    F --> G["Structured JSON results"]

What makes Kast different

Kast replaces text search with compiler-backed answers. Four capabilities set it apart from grep, rg, and ad-hoc refactoring scripts.

• Symbol identity, not text matching — Kast resolves the exact compiler declaration at a position and returns its fully qualified name, kind, and location. Learn more →
• Exhaustive reference search — Every reference result includes searchScope.exhaustive, proving whether every candidate file was searched. Learn more →
• Bounded call hierarchy — Call trees include explicit depth, fan-out, and timeout limits with truncation metadata on every node. Learn more →
• Safe mutations — Rename uses a two-phase plan→apply flow with SHA-256 file hashes for conflict detection. Learn more →

Kast isn't a replacement for your editor's LSP — it's the tool for when work happens outside an editor. Full comparison →

Kast ships a standalone daemon and an IntelliJ plugin. Both speak the same protocol. Learn more →

See it on your code

kast demo runs an interactive comparison of grep-based text search versus Kast's semantic analysis on your own workspace. It picks a symbol, shows what grep gets wrong, then runs resolve, references, rename (dry-run), and call-hierarchy to show the difference.

kast demo --workspace-root=/path/to/your/kotlin/project
kast demo --workspace-root=/path/to/your/kotlin/project --symbol=YourClassName

Get running in 60 seconds

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# Install
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL \
  https://raw.githubusercontent.com/amichne/kast/HEAD/kast.sh)"
# Or: curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/amichne/kast/HEAD/kast.sh | bash

# Start the daemon
kast workspace ensure \
  --workspace-root=/path/to/your/project

# Resolve a symbol
kast resolve \
  --workspace-root=/path/to/your/project \
  --file-path=/path/to/your/project/src/main/kotlin/App.kt \
  --offset=42

That's it. Three commands: install, start, query. The daemon stays warm for subsequent commands, so everything after the first query is fast.

Full install guide → · Quickstart tutorial →

Next steps