How to Install the Optional mif-rs Tools (mif-mcp and mif-cli)

Install the two optional binaries from the mif-rs Rust implementation. mif-mcp brings the plugin’s .mcp.json registration alive, giving your session six MCP tools (validate_mif_document, resolve_ontology_reference, ingest_mif_document, search_documents, find_similar_documents, corpus_stats). mif-cli exposes the same six operations as a command line (validate, ontology resolve, ingest, search, find-similar, corpus-stats) and is the fallback the mif-corpus skill uses when no MCP server is connected. Install either or both; the corpus how-to works with mif-cli alone.

The optionality contract

Both binaries are an optional enhancement. The plugin’s gates, hooks, and skills run entirely on the Node engine; nothing in hooks/mif-guard.mjs or CI depends on either binary (ADR-0004 keeps the Node engine authoritative). With them absent, the registered MCP server simply fails to start and the plugin behaves exactly as before — install them only when you want the semantic-search layer or Rust-native validation.

Prerequisites

The mif-docs plugin installed.
One of: the gh CLI (to download and verify release binaries), or a Rust toolchain (to build from crates.io).

Install from an attested release (recommended)

Download the binaries for your platform from the mif-rs releases and verify their SLSA build provenance before trusting them:

gh release download --repo modeled-information-format/mif-rs \
  --pattern 'mif-mcp-*-macos-arm64' --pattern 'mif-cli-*-macos-arm64'

gh attestation verify mif-mcp-0.3.1-macos-arm64 \
  --repo modeled-information-format/mif-rs \
  --signer-workflow modeled-information-format/mif-rs/.github/workflows/release.yml
gh attestation verify mif-cli-0.3.1-macos-arm64 \
  --repo modeled-information-format/mif-rs \
  --signer-workflow modeled-information-format/mif-rs/.github/workflows/release.yml

install -m 0755 mif-mcp-0.3.1-macos-arm64 ~/.local/bin/mif-mcp
install -m 0755 mif-cli-0.3.1-macos-arm64 ~/.local/bin/mif-cli

Substitute your platform (linux-amd64, linux-arm64, macos-amd64, macos-arm64, windows-amd64.exe) and the current release version.

The verify step is fail-closed and pins the signer: the attestation must have been produced by the mif-rs release workflow itself, not merely by some workflow in the repository. If verification fails for an artifact, do not install it.

Install with cargo

cargo install mif-cli mif-mcp

Either route places the binaries on your PATH, which is all that is required: the plugin’s .mcp.json entry launches mif-mcp over stdio by bare command name, and the mif-corpus skill invokes mif-cli the same way.

Confirm the tools work

For mif-cli, run it directly:

mif-cli --version
mkdir -p .mif && mif-cli corpus-stats

An empty store reports count=0 — that is success. The mkdir matters on a first run: the default store path is .mif/vectors.db relative to the working directory, and corpus-stats reports a missing-parent-dir problem envelope rather than creating the directory itself (only ingest creates it).

For mif-mcp, restart your Claude Code session so the plugin’s MCP registration reconnects, then ask the session to list MCP tools. The six mif-mcp tools appear when the binary resolves. Failures from either tool render as RFC 9457 application/problem+json envelopes with suggested_fix hints.

Or run the plugin’s own advisory check, which reports the same PATH resolution and flags a version behind the latest mif-rs release without requiring a session restart:

npm run doctor

This never fails: it is a report, not a gate, since both binaries stay optional (ADR-0004).

Result

The optional tools are installed and verified, and the plugin’s semantic layer is available over MCP, the command line, or both. To put them to work over a documentation set, see the ingest-and-search how-to and the corpus-layer reference linked in this guide’s relationships[].