> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.engineeringframework.dev/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Framework MCP Server: Overview

> What the Framework MCP server is, why you'd connect an AI agent to it, and how it fits into the Engineering Framework product

## What it is

The Framework MCP server exposes Engineering Framework's planning and
administration operations as a
[Model Context Protocol](https://modelcontextprotocol.io) server. It lets
any MCP-compatible AI client — Claude Code, Claude Desktop, or another agent
— read and write the same data your team manages through the web app, using
the same authentication and authorization rules.

There is no separate code path or relaxed permission model for agent access:
every tool call is authenticated as a real user and goes through the exact
same permission checks and business logic the web dashboard uses.

## Why connect an agent to it

Engineering Framework organizes project planning around a checklist-style
framework: categories of concerns (technical design, reliability, security,
and so on) broken into individual checklist items, each of which can have a
definition, an artifact template, and a completion status per project.
Working through that framework by hand — figuring out what's missing, writing
the artifact, updating the record — is exactly the kind of multi-step,
context-heavy task an AI agent is good at.

Connecting an agent to the MCP server lets you, from your terminal or chat
client:

* Create a project and scope which framework items apply to it
* Ask "what's missing for my current phase?" and get a prioritized list of
  gaps
* Generate a planning artifact (an ADR, rollback plan, SLO doc, etc.) from the
  project's context and the item's template
* Review an existing artifact against its definition and template for gaps
* Manage users, departments, and roles without leaving your agent session

The server pairs [tools](/mcp-server-tools) (individual operations) with
[prompts](/mcp-server-prompts) (multi-step guided workflows that chain several
tool calls together with instructions for the agent to follow).

## How it fits into the product

The MCP server and the web dashboard are two doors into the same house: an
AI agent connects to the MCP server, which enforces the same authentication
and permissions as the dashboard, and reads and writes the same underlying
data.

* **Authentication**: the agent's MCP client presents a valid bearer token on
  every request, the same kind of token a browser session uses.
* **Authorization**: each tool call is checked against the same permission
  model a dashboard user would go through. A tool is hidden entirely from an
  agent that can't view it, and rejected at execution time if the caller
  can't actually perform it — an agent never sees or successfully calls a
  tool outside that person's real permissions.
* **Data**: all reads and writes go through the same underlying logic the
  web app uses, so state stays consistent regardless of whether a person or
  an agent made the change.

## Getting connected

See [Claude Code Setup](/claude-code-setup) for the specific steps to add the
Framework MCP server to Claude Code, including the CLI command, JSON config,
and a `CLAUDE.md` snippet your organization settings page can generate for
you pre-filled with your organization (and optionally project) IDs. Other MCP
clients (Claude Desktop, etc.) connect the same way, over the `/mcp`
StreamableHTTP endpoint, using their own MCP server configuration UI.

Once connected, see:

* [Tools Reference](/mcp-server-tools) for every individual tool, its
  parameters, and what it returns
* [Prompts Reference](/mcp-server-prompts) for the five guided workflows and
  the natural-language phrasing that triggers each one

<Note>
  There's a second, separate MCP server for the Knowledge Base — search and
  retrieval over Knowledge Base Documents, not planning or administration.
  The Framework MCP server's own
  `knowledge_ask` tool already proxies into it, so you often don't need a
  separate connection. See [Knowledge Base MCP Server: Overview](/knowledge-base-mcp-server)
  for when you'd connect to it directly instead.
</Note>