io.github.VikrantSingh01/adaptive-cards-mcp

Adaptive Cards MCP

An MCP server that helps AI assistants generate valid, accessible Adaptive Cards for Teams, Outlook, Copilot, and other Microsoft surfaces. 9 tools, 3 guided workflows, 924 tests.

Blog: I Built an MCP Server That Makes AI 10x Better at Adaptive Cards

Demo

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Quick Start

No install needed — npx downloads and runs it automatically.

1. Add to your AI assistant

Claude Code

claude mcp add adaptive-cards-mcp -- npx adaptive-cards-mcp

GitHub Copilot (VS Code)

Add to .vscode/mcp.json:

{
  "servers": {
    "adaptive-cards-mcp": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["adaptive-cards-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Cursor

Add to .cursor/mcp.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "adaptive-cards-mcp": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["adaptive-cards-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Windsurf

Add to ~/.codeium/windsurf/mcp_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "adaptive-cards-mcp": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["adaptive-cards-mcp"]
    }
  }
}

Microsoft 365 Copilot / Copilot Studio (HTTP/SSE)

TRANSPORT=sse PORT=3001 npx adaptive-cards-mcp

# With auth enabled
TRANSPORT=sse MCP_API_KEY=your-secret npx adaptive-cards-mcp

1. Open Copilot Studio → your agent → Tools → Add a tool → New tool → Model Context Protocol
2. Enter your MCP server URL (e.g., https://your-server.azurewebsites.net/sse)
3. Select the tools to expose

OpenAI ChatGPT

1. Enable Developer mode in ChatGPT settings
2. Go to Settings → Connectors → Create
3. Enter your MCP server HTTPS URL

2. Start using it

Just ask your AI assistant in natural language:

> Create an expense approval card for Teams

> Convert this JSON data into an Adaptive Card table

> Validate this card and fix accessibility issues

> Make this card work on Outlook (v1.4)

The AI picks the right tools, generates a valid card, validates it, and returns production-ready JSON you can paste directly into the Adaptive Cards Designer to preview.

Usage

Natural language (recommended)

Describe what you need — the AI figures out which tools to call:

Approvals and workflows:

> Create an expense approval card for Teams with requester photo, amount,
  category, line items, and approve/reject/comment buttons

> Build a time-off request card — employee name, dates, remaining PTO balance,
  manager approval with optional rejection reason

Notifications and alerts:

> Create a CI/CD deployment notification: service name, environment, build number,
  commit SHA, deploy status with rollback button

> Generate a PagerDuty-style incident alert card — severity P1, affected service,
  start time, on-call engineer, acknowledge/escalate actions

Data and reports:

> Here's our Q1 sales data, turn it into a card:
  [{"region":"APAC","revenue":1250000,"growth":"12%"},
   {"region":"EMEA","revenue":980000,"growth":"8%"},
   {"region":"Americas","revenue":2100000,"growth":"15%"}]

> Convert this CSV to a card:
  Employee,Department,Start Date,Status
  Jane Kim,Engineering,2026-01-15,Active
  Bob Lee,Design,2026-02-01,Active
  Carol Wu,PM,2026-03-10,Onboarding

Forms and input:

> Create an employee onboarding checklist — new hire name, start date,
  assigned buddy, IT setup tasks with checkboxes, and a submit button

> Build a customer feedback survey card with a 1-5 star rating,
  comment field, and NPS score dropdown

Profiles and status:

> Create a team member profile card with photo, name, title, department,
  skills tags, and contact buttons for email/chat/calendar

> Build a service health dashboard card showing 5 microservices
  with status indicators (healthy/degraded/down) and last check time

Cross-host and versioning:

> This card works in Teams but breaks in Outlook — fix it
> Make this card work on Webex (v1.3 only, no Table, no Action.Execute)
> Downgrade this v1.6 card to v1.4 for Viva Connections

Validation and optimization:

> Validate this card and tell me what's wrong — I'm getting render errors
> Make this card accessible — it needs to work with screen readers
> This card is too complex, optimize it for performance and compact layout

Slash commands (MCP prompts)

For guided, multi-step workflows, use the built-in prompts directly:

Create a card:

> /adaptive-cards-mcp:create-adaptive-card
  description: "Expense approval with requester photo, line items table, total amount,
                and approve/reject buttons with comment field"
  host: teams
  intent: approval

Runs: generate → validate → optimize → host config

> /adaptive-cards-mcp:create-adaptive-card
  description: "CI/CD deployment notification with service name, environment,
                build number, status badge, and rollback action"
  host: teams
  intent: notification

> /adaptive-cards-mcp:create-adaptive-card
  description: "Employee profile card with photo, name, title, department,
                contact info, and skills tags"
  host: outlook
  intent: profile

Convert data to a card:

> /adaptive-cards-mcp:convert-data-to-card
  data: [
    { "task": "Review PR #482", "assignee": "Jane", "due": "2026-03-21", "status": "pending" },
    { "task": "Deploy hotfix v2.1.3", "assignee": "Bob", "due": "2026-03-19", "status": "in-progress" },
    { "task": "Update API docs", "assignee": "Carol", "due": "2026-03-22", "status": "done" }
  ]
  title: "Sprint Tasks"
  presentation: table

> /adaptive-cards-mcp:convert-data-to-card
  data: { "service": "api-gateway", "cpu": "92%", "memory": "78%", "requests": "12.4k/min",
          "p99_latency": "245ms", "error_rate": "0.3%", "uptime": "99.97%" }
  title: "Service Health — api-gateway"
  presentation: facts

Runs: analyze data → pick best layout → validate output

Review an existing card:

> /adaptive-cards-mcp:review-adaptive-card
  card: { "type": "AdaptiveCard", "version": "1.6", "body": [...your card...] }
  host: outlook

Runs: validate schema + accessibility → auto-fix issues → summary report

npm library (programmatic)

For use in your own code (bots, APIs, CI pipelines), install the package:

npm install adaptive-cards-mcp

import { generateCard, validateCardFull, dataToCard, optimizeCard } from 'adaptive-cards-mcp';

const result = await generateCard({
  content: "Create a flight status card",
  host: "teams",
  intent: "display"
});

console.log(result.card);       // Adaptive Card JSON
console.log(result.cardId);     // Reference ID for subsequent calls
console.log(result.validation); // Schema + accessibility + host compat

See the Library API reference for full details.

What you get back

Card-producing tools return two clean blocks — card JSON you can copy, and a metadata summary:

```json
{
  "type": "AdaptiveCard",
  "version": "1.6",
  "body": [ ... ],
  "actions": [ ... ]
}

---

Validation: Valid Accessibility Score: 100/100 Elements: 7 | Nesting Depth: 2 | Version: 1.6 Card ID: card-abc123 Steps: generate → validate → optimize Try it out: Paste the card JSON into the Adaptive Cards Designer Local Preview: file:///tmp/ac-preview-xyz.html

## Tools, Prompt and Usage



  





  



## Reference

### MCP Tools (9)

| Tool | Description |
|------|-------------|
| `generate_card` | Natural language / data → valid Adaptive Card v1.6 JSON |
| `validate_card` | Schema validation + accessibility score + host compatibility + suggested fixes |
| `data_to_card` | Auto-select Table / FactSet / Chart / List from data shape |
| `optimize_card` | Improve accessibility, performance, modernize actions |
| `template_card` | Static card → `${expression}` data-bound template |
| `transform_card` | Version upgrade/downgrade, host-config adaptation |
| `suggest_layout` | Recommend best layout pattern for a description |
| `generate_and_validate` | Generate + validate + optionally optimize in one call |
| `card_workflow` | Multi-step pipeline: generate → optimize → template → transform |

### MCP Prompts (3)

| Prompt | Pipeline | Slash command |
|--------|----------|---------------|
| `create-adaptive-card` | generate → validate → optimize → host config | `/adaptive-cards-mcp:create-adaptive-card` |
| `review-adaptive-card` | validate → auto-fix → before/after report | `/adaptive-cards-mcp:review-adaptive-card` |
| `convert-data-to-card` | analyze data → pick presentation → validate | `/adaptive-cards-mcp:convert-data-to-card` |

### MCP Resources (5) + Templates (2)

| Resource | Description |
|----------|-------------|
| `ac://schema/v1.6` | Complete JSON Schema for Adaptive Cards v1.6 |
| `ac://hosts` | Host compatibility matrix for all 7 hosts |
| `ac://hosts/{hostName}` | Single host compatibility info |
| `ac://examples` | 36 curated example cards catalog |
| `ac://examples/{intent}` | Examples filtered by intent |
| `ac://patterns` | 21 canonical layout patterns |
| `ac://cards` | Session card store (cards by cardId) |

### Host Compatibility

| Host | Max Version | Notes |
|------|-------------|-------|
| Generic | 1.6 | Default — no host-specific constraints |
| Teams | 1.6 | Max 6 actions, Action.Execute preferred |
| Outlook | 1.4 | Limited elements, max 4 actions |
| Web Chat | 1.6 | Full support |
| Windows | 1.6 | Subset of elements |
| Viva Connections | 1.4 | SPFx-based ACE framework |
| Webex | 1.3 | No Table, no Action.Execute |

### Configuration

| Environment Variable | Description | Default |
|---------------------|-------------|---------|
| `TRANSPORT` | Transport mode: `stdio` or `sse` | `stdio` |
| `PORT` | HTTP port for SSE transport | `3001` |
| `MCP_API_KEY` | API key for HTTP auth | *(disabled)* |
| `MCP_AUTH_MODE` | Auth mode: `bearer` for token validation | *(disabled)* |
| `ANTHROPIC_API_KEY` | Anthropic Claude API key | *(deterministic mode)* |
| `OPENAI_API_KEY` | OpenAI API key | *(deterministic mode)* |
| `AZURE_OPENAI_API_KEY` | Azure OpenAI API key | *(disabled)* |
| `AZURE_OPENAI_ENDPOINT` | Azure OpenAI endpoint URL | *(disabled)* |
| `OLLAMA_BASE_URL` | Ollama local model URL | *(disabled)* |
| `DEBUG` | Enable debug logging: `adaptive-cards-mcp` | *(disabled)* |
| `MCP_RATE_LIMIT` | Enable rate limiting: `true` | `false` |
| `MCP_TELEMETRY` | Enable telemetry: `true` to opt-in | `false` |
| `POSTHOG_API_KEY` | PostHog project API key for remote reporting | *(disabled)* |
| `POSTHOG_HOST` | PostHog API host | `https://eu.i.posthog.com` |

> **Note:** When used via MCP (Claude Code, Copilot, Cursor), the host LLM provides the intelligence — no API key needed. Set an API key only for standalone/library usage.

### Telemetry & Privacy

Telemetry is **opt-in** and disabled by default. When enabled, the server collects
anonymous usage metrics and sends aggregated data to PostHog to help improve the project.

**How to enable:**
- **VS Code extension:** A one-time consent prompt appears on first install. You can
  change it anytime in Settings → Adaptive Cards → Telemetry.
- **CLI / MCP server:** Set `MCP_TELEMETRY=true` in your environment, or edit
  `~/.adaptive-cards-mcp/config.json` and set `"telemetry": true`.

**What is sent:** Tool names, call counts, durations, error rates, platform (OS),
Node version, package version, transport type.

**What is never sent:** Card content, user prompts, data payloads, IP addresses,
file paths, environment variables.

A random session ID is generated each time the server starts — no persistent
identifier is stored across sessions.

**To disable:** Set `MCP_TELEMETRY=false` or leave unconfigured (default is off).

## Development

```bash
cd packages/core
npm install
npm run build         # TypeScript + copy data files
npm test              # 924 tests (vitest)
npm run test:coverage # With coverage report
npm run lint          # TypeScript type check
npm run lint:eslint   # ESLint check
npm run format        # Prettier formatting

Local Testing

Smoke test all tools and prompts:

./test-mcp-tools.sh --local     # 28 tests — all 9 tools with real-world scenarios
./test-mcp-prompts.sh --local   # 10 tests — all 3 prompts (guided workflows)
./test-mcp-tools.sh             # same tests against published npm package
./test-mcp-prompts.sh           # same tests against published npm package

MCP Inspector (visual UI):

cd packages/core && npm run build
npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector node dist/server.js
# Opens http://localhost:6274 — pick a tool, enter params, click Run

Terminal (stdio):

cd packages/core
echo '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"initialize","params":{"protocolVersion":"2024-11-05","capabilities":{},"clientInfo":{"name":"test","version":"1.0"}}}
{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":2,"method":"tools/call","params":{"name":"generate_card","arguments":{"content":"expense approval card","intent":"approval","host":"teams"}}}' \
  | node dist/server.js 2>/dev/null | tail -1 | python3 -m json.tool

SSE mode:

TRANSPORT=sse PORT=3001 node packages/core/dist/server.js
curl http://localhost:3001/health

Architecture

packages/core/src/
├── server.ts              # MCP server (stdio + SSE, 9 tools, 3 prompts)
├── index.ts               # Library exports
├── types/                 # TypeScript interfaces
├── core/                  # Schema validator, analyzer, accessibility, host compat
├── generation/            # 21 layout patterns, data analyzer, assembler, LLM client
├── tools/                 # 9 tool handlers
├── utils/                 # Logger, input guards, rate limiter, card store, auth, telemetry, preview
└── data/                  # v1.6 schema, 36 examples, host configs

Ecosystem

What's New in v2.3.0

• Accessibility 100/100 — All generated cards now include speak property automatically
• No more broken JSON — Newlines in content sanitized, titles no longer truncate at version numbers
• Host-aware generation — generate_and_validate auto-downgrades card version for Outlook (v1.4), Webex (v1.3)
• CSV fix — CSV data correctly parsed before building FactSet/Table cards
• Telemetry — /metrics endpoint with session tracking, per-tool call distribution, host/intent usage
• MCP Registry — Listed on the official MCP Registry
• E2E test suite — 28 tool tests + 10 prompt tests with quality gates (a11y score, element count)

See the full CHANGELOG for details.

Links

• npm — Install and package details
• GitHub — Source code, issues, and contributions
• MCP Registry — Official MCP server listing

Related Projects

• AdaptiveCards-Mobile — Cross-platform Adaptive Cards renderer
• openclaw-adaptive-cards — OpenClaw AI agent plugin using this library
• Adaptive Cards Documentation — Official docs
• Adaptive Cards Designer — Interactive card designer
• Adaptive Cards Schema Explorer — Interactive schema reference

License

MIT