TINA ServiceNow MCP Server

A production-quality Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for ServiceNow, built with fastmcp. It exposes 63 tools across 13 modules, letting AI clients (Claude Desktop, claude.ai, Claude Code, MCP Inspector) manage ServiceNow records through natural language.

Developed as an SIT ICT3902C Capstone Project in collaboration with Singtel, targeting TINA (Telco Intelligent Network Automation) — a heavily customized ServiceNow platform for network service management. The server runs against both a production TINA instance (local stdio) and a ServiceNow Personal Developer Instance (remote HTTP).

What It Can Do

Standard ServiceNow (ITSM / platform):

TINA-specific (custom network CMDB tables):

The generic table tools mean the server is not limited to the modules above — any ServiceNow table can be queried and its schema inspected on the fly.

Related MCP server: ServiceNow MCP Server

Architecture

src/servicenow_mcp/
├── auth/
│   ├── auth_manager.py     # How the server talks to ServiceNow (basic/OAuth/API key,
│   │                       # plus per-user delegated tokens)
│   └── endpoint_auth.py    # How clients talk to THIS server (static bearer token
│                           # and/or ServiceNow OAuth per-user sign-in)
├── tools/                  # 63 MCP tool implementations across 13 modules
│   ├── incident_tools.py
│   ├── user_tools.py
│   ├── story_tools.py
│   ├── workflow_tools.py
│   ├── knowledge_base.py
│   ├── script_include_tools.py
│   ├── generic_table_tools.py
│   ├── network_element_tools.py
│   ├── vrf_tools.py
│   ├── pe_router_rfs_instance_tools.py / pe_router_rfs_order_tools.py
│   └── elite_ipvpn_cfs_instance_tools.py / elite_ipvpn_cfs_order_tools.py
├── utils/
│   ├── http_client.py      # Pooled HTTP client: retries with backoff, SSL config,
│   │                       # structured JSON errors, PDI hibernation detection
│   ├── helpers.py          # Shared request/response helpers
│   ├── config.py           # Configuration models
│   └── logging_utils.py
├── application.py          # FastMCP application setup + per-request auth routing
├── server.py               # Local entry point (stdio)
└── server_sse.py           # Remote entry point (Streamable HTTP / SSE)

Two Independent Auth Layers

1. Endpoint auth (client → MCP server): static bearer token for header-capable clients, and/or ServiceNow OAuth per-user sign-in for claude.ai / Claude Desktop custom connectors.

2. Upstream auth (MCP server → ServiceNow): Basic, OAuth, or API key — with per-user delegated identity so OAuth-signed-in users act as themselves in ServiceNow, not as a shared service account.

Both modes can be enabled simultaneously. See docs/AUTHENTICATION.md.

HTTP Layer Hardening

The upstream HTTP client is production-hardened with connection pooling, automatic retry with exponential backoff, OAuth token self-healing on 401, structured JSON error responses, and detection of hibernated developer instances (so clients get an actionable message instead of a cryptic HTML error). Details in docs/HTTP_HARDENING_CHANGES.md.

Quick Start (Local, stdio)

1. Create and activate a virtual environment:

   python -m venv .venv

   Windows (cmd):

   .venv\Scripts\activate

   Linux/macOS:

   source .venv/bin/activate

2. Install the package:

   pip install -e .

3. Configure credentials:

   cp .env.example .env   # then fill in your ServiceNow instance URL and credentials

4. Run the server:

   Windows (cmd):

   .venv\Scripts\python.exe src\servicenow_mcp\server.py

   Linux/macOS:

   .venv/bin/python src/servicenow_mcp/server.py

Quick Start (Docker, remote HTTP)

# Build and run the Streamable HTTP server + Caddy TLS reverse proxy
cd deploy
docker compose up -d --build

The compose stack runs two containers:

• mcp — this server on plain HTTP :8080 (never exposed directly; Claude clients require HTTPS for remote MCP)

• caddy — reverse proxy terminating TLS with automatic Let's Encrypt certificates (deploy/Caddyfile)

A complete AWS EC2 free-tier walkthrough — including DNS via DuckDNS, client setup for Claude Desktop / claude.ai / Claude Code, and the scaling story — is in docs/DEPLOYMENT_EC2.md.

Configuration

Copy .env.example to .env and fill in your ServiceNow credentials. All options are documented inline in the example file.

SSL Configuration

The server supports flexible SSL verification to handle corporate networks, proxies, and self-signed certificates.

1. Default Secure Mode (Recommended) SSL verification is enabled by default. For a custom corporate CA, set:

SERVICENOW_SSL_CERT_PATH=C:\path\to\your\corporate-ca.crt

2. Disable SSL Verification (Testing Only)

SERVICENOW_DISABLE_SSL_VERIFY=true

Note: If SERVICENOW_DISABLE_SSL_VERIFY is unset or false, the server defaults to secure verification (using SERVICENOW_SSL_CERT_PATH if provided, or system defaults).

Remote Deployment (Streamable HTTP)

The server runs as a remote MCP server over Streamable HTTP so cloud AI clients (Claude Desktop, claude.ai, Claude Code) can connect:

# Streamable HTTP on 0.0.0.0:8080 at /mcp, protected by a bearer token
MCP_AUTH_TOKEN=<random-secret> servicenow-mcp-http

Key environment variables:

Connecting Claude

• claude.ai / Claude Desktop — add a custom connector pointing at https://<your-domain>/mcp (OAuth sign-in flow, per-user identity)

• Claude Code / header-capable clients — connect with Authorization: Bearer <MCP_AUTH_TOKEN>

Debugging with MCP Inspector

The MCP Inspector is a browser-based tool for interactively testing MCP servers.

# On Windows (cmd)
.venv\Scripts\activate
set PYTHONPATH=src
npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector python src/servicenow_mcp/server.py

# On Windows (PowerShell)
. .venv\Scripts\Activate.ps1
$env:PYTHONPATH = "src"
npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector python src/servicenow_mcp/server.py

# On Linux/macOS
source .venv/bin/activate
PYTHONPATH=src npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector python src/servicenow_mcp/server.py

A convenience script is provided for Windows: .\inspector.ps1

Design Notes & Lessons Learned

• Schema introspection: GlideTableDescriptor behaves inconsistently across ServiceNow environments (returned zero records on some instances). The schema tool queries sys_dictionary directly instead, which is reliable everywhere.

• Pagination header overflow: list tools with large sysparm_fields on field-heavy tables can return HTTP 400 when limit < 31, because ServiceNow's pagination Link header exceeds size limits. The tools enforce safe limits / suppress the pagination header.

• Transport choice: Streamable HTTP was chosen over the deprecated SSE transport for remote deployments; SSE remains available as a legacy fallback.

• Reference: the echelon-ai-labs/servicenow-mcp project was used for structural reference only. This server was rebuilt from scratch on FastMCP, with Streamable HTTP transport and an independent endpoint-authentication layer as key differentiators.

Roadmap (Future Work)

• Autoscaling: a horizontal-scaling design (stateless HTTP workers behind a load balancer) is documented but intentionally not implemented in the current single-instance EC2 deployment.

• Additional tooling: ~18 further tools are planned across CMDB relationship traversal, incident intelligence, change/problem management, and TINA-specific service-assurance workflows.

Documentation

• docs/AUTHENTICATION.md — the two auth layers, per-user OAuth flow, and serving additional ServiceNow instances

• docs/DEPLOYMENT_EC2.md — complete AWS EC2 free-tier deployment guide (Docker + Caddy with automatic HTTPS), client setup, and the scaling story

• docs/HTTP_HARDENING_CHANGES.md — connection pooling, retries, structured errors, hibernation detection

Acknowledgements

Developed as part of the Singapore Institute of Technology ICT3902C Integrated Work Study Programme Capstone Project, in collaboration with Singtel.