Developing Mobile Apps with AI Agents: Introducing the MCP Server for mobile development kit

[LudoNoens]

Update 7 Nov 2025: released version 0.2 with optimized MCP tools, support for multiple schema versions and support for the Windows platform

Update 16 Oct 2025: the setup has been simplified as the @sap/mdk-mcp-server is now also available on npmjs.com

Are you an experienced developer working on mobile app projects based on SAP Mobile Development Kit (MDK)? Do you want to jumpstart your mobile app development with MDK?  Do you use AI agents such as Cursor, Cline, OpenCode, or GitHub Copilot to support you in your daily work? Wouldn't it be cool if the agent could help you develop MDK applications? We now offer some free tools that can provide more context about your project as well as relevant MDK examples to steer the AI coding assistant in doing the right thing.

Figure 1: High level overview MDK MCP Server

 We are excited to announce the release of the MCP server for mobile development kit. This open-source server provides AI agents with comprehensive MDK knowledge and tools. By combining best practice guidelines, project-aware context information, templates for creating new projects, and access to the MDK CLI tools, the MDK MCP server transforms AI agents into MDK development experts.

The code repository is located at  https://github.com/SAP/mdk-mcp-server

This MDK specific release follows previously announced MCP servers by SAP for:

• CAP
• Fiori
• UI5
  
  

What is an MCP Server?

An Model Context Protocol (MCP) server is designed to manage and deliver capabilities to Large Language Models (LLMs) via AI agents. It bridges the gap between LLMs and external resources such as services, tools, and data, enabling LLMs to interact with these resources.

What is mobile development kit?

The SAP Mobile Development Kit (MDK) is a powerful framework that enables developers to build cross-platform mobile applications using a metadata-driven approach. It is part of SAP Business Technology Platform and integrates tightly with SAP Mobile Services.

Some of SAP’s larger and complex mobile apps are built using MDK. An example is SAP Service and Asset Manager.

Why should you use this MCP server?

The newly introduced MCP server for mobile development kit transforms AI agents into MDK development experts. It provides context-focused tools that aim to help the AI agent to answer questions such as:

• Finding examples of using an MDK component.
• Retrieving details about specific properties of an MDK component.
• Finding the schema for a specific MDK component.
• Searching MDK documentation.

Other reasons for using this MCP server:

• Large Language Models (LLMs) sometimes lack information on the latest best practices and metadata recommended for MDK development.
• They might recommend the use of MDK metadata that does not exist in the version your project is using, or MDK metadata that has been marked as deprecated.
• By facilitating MDK validation tools, your coding agent can validate the changes it has made, ensuring it follows current best practices.
• Scaffolding tools can help agents kickstart new projects faster and with established patterns, saving token costs.

The MCP server can help you answer questions you as a developer have about the project you are working on, such as:

• Explain what this specific file does in the MDK project structure.
• How can I use Fragments in my project?
• Can this application support offline capabilities?
• Are there any requirements for the data source to support offline?
  
  

Combining AI agents with existing tools – a powerful and efficient combination

Instead of relying fully on what an AI agent can generate, we offer the agent access to existing tools in our MDK toolset.

Figure 2: Tools used by the MCP Server for mobile development kit

With MDK tools, we can migrate, validate, build and deploy projects. With the MDK Generator, we provide project scaffolding for Base, Empty, List-Detail and CRUD templates. Based on your prompts, we can further generate pages and actions to your MDK project. This ensures a more predictable outcome, saves time and tokens (costs).

Open Source

We are also happy to announce that the MCP Server for mobile development kit is an open-source project, licensed under the Apache-2.0 license. Learn more about open source at SAP.

We are curious to see what you will do with our MCP server for mobile development kit ! Please do not hesitate to provide your feedback here or report any issues in our GitHub repository.

Setup

Assuming you have already installed node.js on your machine, first install Yeoman. This must be an older version of Yeoman to avoid compatibility issues.

npm install -g yo@4.3.1

For installing the MDK MCP server, we offer two options:

1. Use npm to install it from the public npmjs registry at https://www.npmjs.com/package/@sap/mdk-mcp-server .

npm install -g @sap/mdk-mcp-server

2. Clone the open-source code repository at https://github.com/SAP/mdk-mcp-server, and use npm to install it:

git clone https://github.com/SAP/mdk-mcp-server.git
cd mdk-mcp-server
npm i --include=optional
npm run build
npm i -g /mdk-mcp-server@.​

Both MDK Tools (@sap/mdk-tools) as well as MDK Generator (@sap/generator-mdk) will automatically be installed as dependencies of the MCP server for mobile development kit.

Next, your MCP client (AI agent) needs to be configured to make use of the server. Depending on the AI agent used, the configuration looks a little different. We are still waiting for alignment across AI agents regarding this kind of configuration.

In general, the mcpServers configuration should include the following section:

     "mdk-mcp": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "mdk-mcp",
      "args": ["--schema-version", "25.9"]
    }

Note: the schema-version is optional. By default, the latest schema version will be used.

Once installed, the AI agent in your IDE will automatically gain access to the MDK MCP server and can start using the tools at its own discretion. Depending on your IDE and settings, you may need to approve the first tool calls.

Figure 3: MCP Servers configuration in Cline

Rules

The following rules help guide the agent to use the server correctly.

## Guidelines for MDK
Don’t generate .service.metadata file
Don’t generate .xml file in ‘Services’ folder
Don’t change .project.json file

Add these rules to your existing global or project-specific AGENTS.md (specifics may vary based on respective MCP client).

Figure 4: MDK specific rules configuration in Cline

Tools

This release of the MDK MCP server includes the following tools, which can be accessed by your AI agent:

Tool name	Description
mdk-gen-project	Generates a new MDK project in the current directory.
mdk-gen-i18n	Returns a prompt to generate i18n files for MDK project describing the texts, labels and messages.
mdk-gen-databinding-page	Returns a prompt to generate a databinding-enabled MDK page describing the page layout, controls and data bindings.
mdk-gen-layout-page	Generates a layout-based MDK page. You can describe the page layout, controls.
mdk-gen-entity	Generates CRUD or List Detail template metadata for a new entity set.
mdk-gen-action	Returns a prompt to generate an MDK action describing the action type and data bindings.
mdk-manage	Comprehensive MDK project management tool that handles build, deploy, validate, migrate, show QR code, and mobile app editor operations.
mdk-docs	Unified tool for accessing MDK documentation including search, component schemas, property details, and examples.

Integration with SAP Mobile Services

For the integration with SAP Mobile Services, the MCP server currently makes use of the Cloud Foundry CLI and a service metadata file that contains details about:

1. The mobile application defined in the SAP Mobile Services instance.
2. The OData service metadata of the data source used in the mobile application. This describes the data model and capabilities of the OData service.

An example of such a service metadata file (with filename “.service.metadata”) is provided in our code repository. However, changing this file is not easy. We offer a tool to help with creating or updating this file as part of our Visual Studio Code extension: Mobile development kit extension for Visual Studio Code

How to use this tool to create or update the “.service.metadata” file:

1. Install Mobile development kit extension for Visual Studio Code version 1.32.0 or later in your Visual Studio Code.

2. Make sure you have installed the Cloud Foundry CLI.

3. Make sure to log in to your SAP Business Technology Platform environment on Cloud Foundry. This can be done by executing the following command in a terminal window:

cf login <your target endpoint> --sso

For more details you can refer to this help documentation.

4. Open the Command Palette in Visual Studio Code and select the "MDK: Open Mobile App Editor" command.

Figure 5: MDK: Open Mobile App Editor

5. Create/Select a new/existing mobile app.

Figure 6: Mobile Application Editor in Visual Studio Code

6. Select a destination.

7. Click "Add App to Project" button.

We also offer a tool in the MCP server to provide you the above information through the agent. You can basically ask the agent how to create the “.service.metadata” file.

In future releases we aim to enhance and further simplify the integration with SAP Mobile Services.

What can you do with this server?

The MCP server for mobile development kit works well for everyday tasks in MDK projects. It can help you refactor your code and metadata and add new features.

Important: Our MCP Server for mobile development kit is designed to support professional developers in their daily work. As with all AI-generated information, you should check the generated results carefully to avoid unintended side effects. As a professional developer, YOU are in control and responsible for the outcome.

Some examples where this MCP server can help

Update old projects

I’ve opened an old project that I’ve created in one of my previous blog post series. I know the MDK metadata schema is outdated and want to update it. I’ll ask Cline which tool can be used for this. As you can see in the screenshot, Cline made use of the MCP server for MDK to find out which tool to be used and is now proactively asking to run the MDK migration tool.

Figure 7: Update old MDK project in Cline

Explain specific properties

In the screenshot below, I am using Cursor and asked what the property “Animated” does in an Action.

Figure 8: Get explanation of a property in Cursor

Help to deploy the app

Making use of the available tools, the AI agent can help you deploy the mobile app and provide detailed information on how to install the app on your device.

Figure 9a: Deployment - validate and build the app in Cursor 

Figure 9b: Deployment - deploy and show QR code in Cursor 

Figure 9c: Deployment - Summary and installation instructions in Cursor

Conclusion

In this blog post we have introduced new tools to help professional developers in their everyday tasks developing MDK apps. We have made the tools as open as possible, to allow developers to use their favorite agentic development environment. As a developer, you should be able to develop SAP mobile apps in whatever environment you prefer to use.

We are also providing the MCP server as open source, allowing you to modify the tool to your needs and contribute enhancements.

As always, feedback is welcome to improve the blog posts, but most importantly the tools and products involved.