Use grove as a library

The engine behind the CLI and the MCP server is a published Rust crate, grove-cst (the library name is grove_core). Depend on it to run the same structural queries in-process — no subprocess, and the grammar cache stays warm across calls.

The crates.io id is grove-cst (grove and grove-core were taken by unrelated crates); the library you use is grove_core, and the CLI binary is grove (published as grove-cst-cli).

Add it

cargo add grove-cst

The ops surface

Every structural query lives in grove_core::ops and works for any registered language (grammars load from the registry as WASM at runtime):

use std::path::Path;
use grove_core::ops;

fn main() -> anyhow::Result<()> {
    // Every definition under `src/`, gitignore-aware.
    for s in ops::symbols(Path::new("src"), None, None, false, false)? {
        println!("{} {} — {}:{}", s.kind, s.name, s.file, s.line);
    }

    // One symbol's full source, by id or by (file, name).
    let body = ops::source("rust:src/main.rs#main@1", None)?;
    println!("{}", body.source);
    Ok(())
}

The core return types (Symbol, SourceResult, CallSite, FileMap, Defect) are re-exported at the crate root. To print results the way the CLI does, use grove_core::render — the same formatters both faces share (see ADR 0003).

Provisioning grammars

A consumer that ships its own environment can provision the grammars a project needs (fetch + write grove.lock) via grove_core::init::provision_project, or resolve them explicitly through the grove_core::registry module. The registry-resolution precedence is described in Languages & grammars.

API reference

The full, always-current API reference is published on docs.rs:

• https://docs.rs/grove-cst — every public item, generated from the source.