Janee vs Serena

A side-by-side comparison of two Developer Tools servers — tools, transport, auth, maintenance, and copy-paste config for each.

	Janee Secrets management for AI agents via MCP — agents call your APIs without ever seeing the keys. Unverified stdio (local) API key TypeScript	Serena LSP-powered coding agent toolkit: semantic symbol search, references and structural edits. Verified stdio (local) No auth Python
Category	Developer Tools	Developer Tools
Language	TypeScript	Python
Transport	stdio (local)	stdio (local)
Auth	API key	None
GitHub stars	28	12k
Last commit	3 months ago	23 days ago
Verified
Actively maintained
Install	`npm install -g @true-and-useful/janee`	`uvx --from git+https://github.com/oraios/serena serena start-mcp-server`
Repo	Open	Open

Verdict

Pick Janee if you prefer its approach (secrets management for ai agents via mcp — agents call your apis without ever seeing the keys).

Pick Serena if you prefer the more popular, battle-tested option, and you want zero-setup with no API key.

Add Janee

Install / run

npm install -g @true-and-useful/janee

Paste into ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "janee": {
      "command": "janee",
      "args": [
        "serve"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Add Serena

Install / run

uvx --from git+https://github.com/oraios/serena serena start-mcp-server

Paste into ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "serena": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": [
        "--from",
        "git+https://github.com/oraios/serena",
        "serena",
        "start-mcp-server"
      ]
    }
  }
}

Requires `uv` (the Python package runner). Install it from https://docs.astral.sh/uv/ if `uvx` is not found.

FAQ

Janee or Serena — which is better?

Pick Janee if you prefer its approach (secrets management for ai agents via mcp — agents call your apis without ever seeing the keys). Pick Serena if you prefer the more popular, battle-tested option, and you want zero-setup with no API key.

Can I use both Janee and Serena?

Yes — MCP clients let you enable multiple servers at once. Add both configs to your client's mcpServers and use whichever tool fits the task.

Do Janee and Serena work with Claude, Cursor and Windsurf?

Both do. Copy the per-client config below into Claude Desktop, Cursor, or Windsurf.

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