qwen-code/integrations/external-context

External Context extension

This private Qwen Code integration connects one interactive CLI process to one administrator-bound external context corpus without changing Qwen Core. It has two mutually exclusive retrieval-only profiles:

• On-demand: version 1 configuration and the MCP context_search({ query }) tool.
• Auto-recall: version 2 configuration and an administrator-installed UserPromptSubmit Hook, with no external-context MCP server.

The built-in adapters support Mem0 Platform V3 search and a small Generic HTTP Search V1 contract for existing knowledge or RAG services. There are no write tools, personal memory, trusted user identity, per-document ACLs, or tamper-resistant audit.

Use the governed Gateway/Orchestrator Profile described in #7449 when those controls are required.

Trust boundary

In the on-demand profile, the model can provide only the search query. In the auto-recall profile, the query is derived only from Qwen's optional submitted_prompt provenance, captured before model-bound expansions. Provider type, endpoint, credential, Mem0 app_id, and all other corpus selectors are fixed before either process starts.

The actual corpus-isolation boundary is the provider-side credential, project, index, or corpus. A Mem0 app_id or any other client-supplied filter is classification, not authorization. The credential must be restricted to the intended corpus and should be read-only where the provider supports that.

For on-demand retrieval, the extension manifest alone is not a managed binding. Qwen merges MCP servers by name, and a settings, project, or command-line server named external-context can replace the manifest contribution while retaining the same permission-rule name. A managed deployment must therefore start Qwen with an administrator-owned --mcp-config based on examples/managed-mcp.json. The Phase 1 launcher must construct the complete Qwen argument vector itself and must not pass through arbitrary caller arguments. This command-line tier overrides user, project, workspace, and system MCP settings. The documented permission rule is safe to deploy only inside that pinned process.

The launcher must also construct an administrator-approved environment rather than inherit caller-controlled values. Qwen can subsequently load values from the repository's .env and .qwen/.env files, so the Direct Profile requires the repository, those files, and same-UID code to be trusted. The source pin prevents same-name MCP configuration collisions; it is not a process sandbox. Use the governed profile when those inputs may be hostile or when credentials and process execution must be isolated.

The extension omits MCP readOnlyHint because a provider search may record access metadata or otherwise have provider-side read effects. It exposes no explicit mutation operation, but the Qwen process still passes search queries to an external service, so this integration is not a DLP boundary. Credentials inherited by Qwen may also be visible to same-UID processes and tools. Use the governed profile when the credential or outbound-query policy must be isolated from the CLI user.

The managed-settings example allows Qwen to invoke search without per-call confirmation. It is on-demand rather than prompt-triggered, but it is not necessarily initiated manually by the user. In interactive non-YOLO mode, placing the tool under permissions.ask requests confirmation. YOLO mode auto-approves ordinary tools despite ask, and users can change approval mode during a session. Phase 1 does not provide non-bypassable per-call confirmation; use the governed profile when that is required.

Configure

On-demand profile

1. Give the repository its own provider-side project, index, or corpus and a credential restricted to it. Verify that the credential cannot access or select another corpus.

2. Copy the applicable provider configuration from examples/ to an administrator-owned location outside the repository that the CLI user cannot modify. Configure apiKeyEnv or tokenEnv if needed, then set the referenced environment variable to the credential. timeoutMs defaults to 5000 and may be between 1 and 30000 milliseconds.

3. Have the managed launcher set QWEN_EXTERNAL_CONTEXT_CONFIG to the absolute configuration path.

4. From the Qwen Code checkout, install dependencies and build this workspace:

   npm install
   npm run build --workspace @qwen-code/external-context
   

   Phase 1 is a private monorepo workspace. Copying the directory or its npm tarball without packaging its runtime dependencies is not a supported deployment.

5. Copy examples/managed-mcp.json to an administrator-owned location and replace every placeholder with an absolute path. The command, args, and cwd must identify an administrator-controlled Node executable, reviewed checkout, and dependency tree that the CLI user cannot modify. The managed launcher must accept no arbitrary Qwen arguments. It must construct a clean, administrator-approved environment, inject the provider configuration and credential, change to the intended repository, and invoke:

   qwen --mcp-config /administrator/path/external-context-mcp.json
   

   The MCP subprocess honors HTTP_PROXY, HTTPS_PROXY, and NO_PROXY through an environment-aware dispatcher. If the provider requires an egress proxy, the launcher must include the administrator-approved proxy variables in that clean environment. Include localhost, 127.0.0.1, and [::1] in NO_PROXY when using the loopback Generic HTTP provider.

6. Point QWEN_CODE_SYSTEM_SETTINGS_PATH at an administrator-controlled copy of examples/managed-settings.json only inside this managed launcher; do not install its automatic allow rule for unrelated Qwen sessions. It disables /cd to reduce accidental workspace/corpus mismatch and allows the pinned search tool. Neither setting is an authorization boundary: the provider credential is still the corpus boundary, and a new Qwen process is required to switch repositories.

For a local trusted trial, the built directory may instead be linked with qwen extensions link. The extension manifest contribution and workspace-scoped enablement are convenience mechanisms only; they do not provide the managed MCP source binding described above. Before starting Qwen, the trial environment must set QWEN_EXTERNAL_CONTEXT_CONFIG to the absolute configuration path and set the credential environment variable referenced by that file.

Each MCP subprocess reads configuration and credentials once when it starts. Qwen may restart that subprocess, so the configuration path, file contents, and credential-to-corpus binding must remain immutable for the whole Qwen session. Do not overwrite or reuse a configuration path for another corpus. Changing the working directory does not change the configured corpus. The managed settings disable Qwen's /cd command as an accidental-misuse guard, but cannot prevent every same-UID action. To switch corpora, terminate the old Qwen session and start a new one with a new managed configuration path.

Auto-recall profile

Auto-recall sends a sanitized best-effort query to the external provider for each eligible ordinary interactive prompt. It requires a non-empty submitted_prompt captured by the supported interactive TUI before reminders, file and resource expansion, extension output, and vision expansion. It never falls back to the legacy model-bound prompt. Missing or invalid provenance fails closed before configuration or credentials are read. Common credential shapes are removed from the submitted text, but this is not DLP.

1. Copy examples/auto-recall-mem0.json or examples/auto-recall-generic-http.json to an administrator-owned location. Set repositoryRoot to the one absolute repository bound to the Provider credential. The directory must exist and must not be a filesystem root.
2. Build this workspace so dist/auto-recall.js exists.
3. Put the applicable examples/managed-auto-recall-user-settings-posix.json or examples/managed-auto-recall-user-settings-windows.json content in the settings.json of a dedicated administrator-controlled QWEN_HOME. Replace all placeholders with fixed absolute Node and Hook paths.
4. Point QWEN_CODE_SYSTEM_SETTINGS_PATH at an administrator-controlled copy of examples/managed-auto-recall-system-settings.json. Its system-level disableAllHooks: false prevents lower-precedence workspace settings from suppressing the required Hook.
5. Use a launcher that accepts no arguments, verifies stdin and stdout are TTYs, starts in repositoryRoot, supplies only an administrator-approved environment, and fixes all Qwen, Node, Hook, configuration, settings, and credential paths. It must set QWEN_CODE_MEMORY_TEAM=0, QWEN_CODE_MEMORY_TEAM_SYNC=0, QWEN_TELEMETRY_ENABLED=0, QWEN_TELEMETRY_LOG_PROMPTS=0, QWEN_TELEMETRY_INCLUDE_SENSITIVE_SPAN_ATTRIBUTES=0, and QWEN_USAGE_STATISTICS_ENABLED=0. On Windows, the approved PATH must resolve powershell to the system executable, and PowerShell profiles must be absent or administrator-controlled. A user-controlled shell shim or profile is outside the Direct Profile trust model.

Do not link or enable the external-context Extension Manifest and do not install examples/managed-mcp.json in the auto-recall process; either action would add the on-demand MCP surface and permit duplicate retrieval. The shared configuration loader and MCP entry point intentionally understand v2 for forward compatibility, so the schema version does not enforce this deployment separation. The profile supports only a fresh interactive TTY session. The managed system settings explicitly disable speculative execution because accepted speculation can bypass the normal UserPromptSubmit path. It does not support -p, stream-json, ACP, serve, YOLO, --continue, --resume, arbitrary launcher arguments, or switching repositories in one process. Mid-turn steering messages do not fire UserPromptSubmit and therefore do not trigger recall; only ordinary submitted turns are eligible.

The Hook reads at most 1 MiB from stdin, emits at most 4000 code units of structured untrusted_external_context, performs no retries or caching, and fails open as {} after the Node entry point starts. Failure to spawn the pinned Node process and a Qwen outer command timeout retain Qwen's blocking command-Hook semantics. The Provider timeout defaults to 1500ms and is capped at 5000ms; the internal Hook wall-clock budget is 6500ms and the managed Qwen command timeout is 8000ms.

Retrieved results are sent to the model provider as user-layer additional context. The managed profile disables Qwen chat recording, native memory, usage statistics, and telemetry by default. Provider-side access logs remain outside this integration's control.

For Mem0 auto-recall, verify that Memory Decay is disabled for the bound Project. If that cannot be verified, use the on-demand profile.

The integration emits no local per-request audit record. It does not write queries, results, credentials, provider errors, or operation metadata to stderr. The on-demand MCP entry point may write a sanitized startup configuration error once before it exits; unexpected startup failures remain opaque. The auto-recall Hook emits only {} on failure. Operators who need access records may use provider-side logs, but those are outside this integration and are not a tamper-resistant compliance audit.

Generic HTTP Search V1

The configured baseUrl must be an origin with no path, query, credentials, or fragment. That origin receives a request at the fixed path /v1/context/search:

POST /v1/context/search
Authorization: Bearer <credential>
Accept: application/json
Content-Type: application/json

{"query":"normalized query","limit":5}

The response is:

{
  "items": [
    {
      "id": "opaque-id",
      "content": "retrieved text",
      "title": "optional title",
      "uri": "optional provenance URI",
      "score": 0.82,
      "updated_at": "2026-07-23T00:00:00Z"
    }
  ]
}

The fixed endpoint and the credential's effective capabilities must together restrict access to one corpus. A bearer credential that can access another corpus through another endpoint or selector does not meet the Direct Profile boundary. The request contains no client-selected tenant, repository, namespace, or filter. HTTPS is required except for explicit loopback HTTP used in local development.

Mem0 Platform V3

The adapter calls POST /v3/memories/search/ with the configured app_id, top_k: 5, threshold: 0.1, and rerank: false. The API key's effective Mem0 Project must already be restricted to the intended corpus; a different app_id in the same broadly accessible Project does not establish isolation. This extension does not call Mem0 add, update, or delete APIs.

Mem0 Memory Decay is opt-in and off by default. If enabled, search reinforces returned memories, updates access history, and can affect later ranking. Keep it disabled when search must have no semantic provider-side state change. Provider audit or access logs may still be retained. See Mem0 Memory Decay.

Rollout and rollback

Start with the pinned on-demand MCP for one workspace and validate search quality and provenance. Enable auto-recall only after the administrator accepts automatic query forwarding, first with a fake provider, then one trusted repository, and finally a small team. Do not run both profiles in one process.

Removing the pinned MCP or auto-recall Hook from the managed launcher rolls back the Qwen integration; local on-demand trials can instead disable or remove the extension. Restore a preserved v1 configuration before rolling back to a binary that does not understand v2. The integration does not call explicit mutation or deletion APIs, but rollback does not remove provider-side search logs or access metadata.