IBM Sales Guidance Tool — MCP Server

An MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that exposes the IBM Sales Guidance Tool as tools Bob can invoke directly from chat.

Once registered, Bob can:

• Ask the IBM AskSales AI assistant questions about products, deals, and competitors

• Search IBM AskSales content (playbooks, battle cards, competitive intel)

• Generate a full 4-section Client Roadmap for any named account

• Check live Watson Assistant + AskSales connectivity status

Tools

Setup

1. Install dependencies and build

cd sales-guidance-mcp
npm install
npm run build

2. Register with Bob

Add the following to your .bob/mcp.json (workspace scope):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "sales-guidance": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/absolute/path/to/sales-guidance-mcp/build/index.js"],
      "env": {
        "SALES_GUIDANCE_URL": "https://ibm-sales-guidance-tool.2ck01rg2j69e.us-east.codeengine.appdomain.cloud",
        "SELLER_EMAIL": "your.email@ibm.com"
      }
    }
  }
}

Replace /absolute/path/to/sales-guidance-mcp with the real path on your machine.

3. Verify

Ask Bob: "Check the sales guidance tool status" — it will call sales_guidance_diag and report Watson + AskSales connectivity.

Configuration

All config is via environment variables in the env block of mcp.json:

Architecture

Bob (chat) ──── MCP tool call ────► sales-guidance-mcp (stdio)
                                         │
                                         │ HTTPS
                                         ▼
                              IBM Sales Guidance Tool
                              (Code Engine, us-east)
                                         │
                              ┌──────────┴──────────┐
                              │                     │
                    Watson Assistant          IBM AskSales
                    (AskSales skill)          (when configured)

The MCP server is a thin HTTP client — it calls the deployed Next.js app's API routes over HTTPS. No local services, no Docker, no credentials stored in this repo.

Known issues

Watson Assistant / AskSales outage (2026-07-21)

IBM reported degradation on IBM product queries in Watson Assistant / AskSales. Symptoms: sales_guidance_chat and sales_guidance_roadmap time out. Run sales_guidance_diag — if watson.latencyWarning is set, the outage is still active. Retry later.

AskSales search returns empty results

sales_guidance_asksales requires real AskSales credentials on the server side (ASKSALES_API_URL, ASKSALES_API_KEY). Run sales_guidance_diag — if asksales.enabled is false, placeholder credentials are in use and this is expected.

Roadmap timeout

The sales_guidance_roadmap tool has a 100s client timeout (default). Watson takes 30–90s to generate a full 4-section roadmap. If you consistently hit timeouts, set REQUEST_TIMEOUT_MS=120000 in the env block.

Development

npm run build    # compile TypeScript → build/index.js
npm run dev      # watch mode

The source is a single file: src/index.ts. Each tool is registered with server.registerTool() using the MCP SDK v2 API.