Backstage MCP Server

Instructions

Implementation Reference

• src/index.ts:211-224 (handler)

  The core handler function for the 'get_backstage_overview' tool. Retrieves content from the backstageOverview knowledge base, optionally filtered by section, and returns it as JSON-formatted text.

  private getBackstageOverview(section?: string) {
    const content = section ? 
      this.knowledgeBase.overview.content[section] : 
      this.knowledgeBase.overview.content;
  
    return {
      content: [
        {
          type: 'text',
          text: JSON.stringify(content, null, 2),
        },
      ],
    };
  }

• src/index.ts:50-63 (registration)

  Tool registration in ListToolsRequestSchema response, defining name, description, and input schema.

  {
    name: 'get_backstage_overview',
    description: 'Get comprehensive overview of Backstage framework including core features, benefits, and architecture',
    inputSchema: {
      type: 'object',
      properties: {
        section: {
          type: 'string',
          description: 'Specific section to retrieve (optional)',
          enum: ['whatIsBackstage', 'coreFeatures', 'benefits', 'architecture']
        }
      }
    }
  },

• src/knowledge/backstage-overview.ts:1-45 (helper)

  Supporting data structure providing the actual content for the backstage overview tool, structured by sections.

  export const backstageOverview = {
    title: "Backstage Overview",
    description: "Comprehensive overview of Backstage framework",
    content: {
      whatIsBackstage: {
        definition: "Backstage is an open source framework for building developer portals. Powered by a centralized software catalog, Backstage restores order to your microservices and infrastructure and enables your product teams to ship high-quality code quickly — without compromising autonomy.",
        purpose: "Backstage unifies all your infrastructure tooling, services, and documentation to create a streamlined development environment from end to end.",
        cncfStatus: "CNCF Incubation project after graduating from Sandbox"
      },
      coreFeatures: {
        softwareCatalog: {
          name: "Backstage Software Catalog",
          description: "For managing all your software (microservices, libraries, data pipelines, websites, ML models, etc.)",
          useCase: "Central registry of all software components in your organization"
        },
        softwareTemplates: {
          name: "Backstage Software Templates",
          description: "For quickly spinning up new projects and standardizing your tooling with your organization's best practices",
          useCase: "Scaffolding new services with organizational standards"
        },
        techDocs: {
          name: "Backstage TechDocs",
          description: "For making it easy to create, maintain, find, and use technical documentation, using a 'docs like code' approach",
          useCase: "Documentation as code integrated with your software catalog"
        },
        plugins: {
          name: "Plugin Ecosystem",
          description: "Growing ecosystem of open source plugins that further expand Backstage's customizability and functionality",
          useCase: "Extensible platform for custom integrations"
        }
      },
      benefits: {
        engineeringManagers: "Maintain standards and best practices across the organization, manage whole tech ecosystem from migrations to test certification",
        developers: "Fast and simple to build software components in a standardized way, central place to manage all projects and documentation",
        platformEngineers: "Extensibility and scalability by easily integrating new tools and services via plugins",
        everyone: "Single, consistent experience that ties all infrastructure tooling, resources, standards, owners, contributors, and administrators together"
      },
      architecture: {
        frontend: "React-based frontend application",
        backend: "Node.js backend with plugin architecture",
        database: "PostgreSQL for persistent storage",
        plugins: "Microservice-like plugin architecture for extensibility"
      }
    }
  };