Set up the UI5 MCP server

The UI5 MCP Server runs as a local stdio process and can be connected to an MCP-capable client in a few steps.

Prerequisites

Install Node.js version 20.17.0 or 22.9.0 (or newer) and npm version 8 or newer. An existing UI5 project isn't strictly required — create_ui5_app can also scaffold a brand-new project from scratch.

Connecting the server to your client

For most MCP clients, the standard configuration works with npx -y @ui5/mcp-server as the stdio command. Claude Code users can set it up directly via the CLI:

claude mcp add --transport stdio --scope user ui5-mcp-server -- npx -y @ui5/mcp-server

Codex has the analogous command codex mcp add --transport stdio ui5-mcp-server -- npx -y @ui5/mcp-server. VS Code additionally offers installation directly from the GitHub MCP server registry. On native Windows (outside WSL), npx may need to be wrapped with cmd /c, since the process call can otherwise fail.

Recording project conventions for the agent

To make an agent use the server proactively, the official documentation recommends adding a short rule to the project-wide AGENTS.md or CLAUDE.md file: instructing the agent to call get_guidelines before UI5-specific tasks to fetch current coding standards, rather than relying on potentially outdated training knowledge.

First steps with the agent

For a new project, ask the agent to call create_ui5_app with a suitable template. In an existing project, get_project_info gives an initial overview of the framework variant (SAPUI5 or OpenUI5) and version. Before larger changes, it's worth checking get_api_reference for the affected controls, and after finishing a change, run_ui5_linter and run_manifest_validation verify that the generated code follows official conventions.

Adjusting the configuration

If the default domain list (localhost, services.odata.org) isn't enough because the project connects to additional OData services, add further domains to UI5_MCP_SERVER_ALLOWED_DOMAINS as an environment variable in the client configuration. Teams working exclusively with SAPUI5 rather than OpenUI5 usually don't need to change anything — the server detects the framework variant automatically from the project configuration and picks the matching CDN source.

Common pitfalls

Without a supported Node.js version, the server won't start at all; running node --version before setup saves unnecessary troubleshooting. If a tool needs an external domain for API calls that isn't in the allowlist, the affected tools fail until the domain is added. Since the server runs purely locally, it doesn't work as a shared team endpoint — each developer sets it up individually on their own machine.

Standardizing the setup across a team

Because every developer starts the server locally on their own, it's worth documenting the client configuration (the claude mcp add command or the equivalent entry for Codex/Cursor) together with the AGENTS.md rule to call get_guidelines, right in the project repository instead of passing it along verbally. That way new team members start with the same configuration and the same agent behavior, without diverging local settings creeping in and producing inconsistent code that partly violates UI5 conventions.