A Go tool that **distills command output and retrieves code context** before it reaches a paid LLM. Available as a **Skill** (recommended), a
A Go tool that distills command output and retrieves code context before it reaches a paid LLM. Available as a Skill (recommended), a standalone CLI, and an MCP server. Inspired by the distill CLI and built with hexagonal. Exposed over MCP by the context distill mcp server, that capability becomes something an assistant can invoke while it works, not something you go and do afterwards.
context-distill exposes four operations accessible in three ways:
Everything the assistant can do here goes through one of these:
distill_batch — Distills one raw output payload using an explicit question contractdistill_mcp_output — 1. You already have a raw MCP payload and pass it with --output. 2. You want context-distill to call an MCP tool first and then distill the resultdistill_watch — The distill_watch tool exposed by this serversearch_code — Searches repository code locally and distills compact matches according to --questionVersion — The Version tool exposed by this serverYou will need one environment variable: OPENAI_BASE_URL. The server will not start without them, which is usually why the tools fail to appear on a first run. Keep credentials in your client's env block or a secrets manager rather than in a file you might commit.
Setup follows the usual MCP pattern — install or clone the server, register it in your client's configuration file, restart the client. The configuration blocks on this page cover the common clients.
This sits in the developer tooling group, where several servers overlap in what they claim to do but differ sharply once you actually set them up. Context Distill's toolset — distill_batch, distill_mcp_output, distill_watch and 2 more — is a fair guide to whether it matches your workflow. It is maintained by jcastilloa; worth a glance at recent repository activity before you build anything load-bearing on it.
We check each listing at SyncDev against the project's documentation before it goes live — if something here drifts out of date, it is a bug worth reporting.
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
| distill_batch | Distills one raw output payload using an explicit question contract. |
| distill_mcp_output | 1. You already have a raw MCP payload and pass it with --output. 2. You want context-distill to call an MCP tool first and then distill the result. |
| distill_watch | The distill_watch tool exposed by this server. |
| search_code | Searches repository code locally and distills compact matches according to --question. |
| Version | The Version tool exposed by this server. |
{
"mcpServers": {
"context-distill": {
"command": "/absolute/path/to/context-distill",
"args": ["--transport", "stdio"]
}
}
}Configuration as documented by the project. Restart the client after saving.
| Variable | Description | Required |
|---|---|---|
| OPENAI_BASE_URL | Endpoint or connection string the server talks to. | Yes |
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