anaplan-user-mcp

A business-user-focused MCP server for Anaplan — read-only, session-cached, and gated by AI-layer metadata.

Unlike full-featured Anaplan MCP servers with dozens of tools, anaplan-user-mcp exposes just 5 tools designed for guided data exploration by business users through an AI assistant.

How It Works

The Iron Door

Not every Anaplan model is accessible. A model must be explicitly prepared for AI consumption by including two sentinel modules:

• AI Model Metadata — marks the model as AI-accessible
• AI Module Metadata — defines which modules are exposed

Within admitted models, only line items tagged with AI LI Metadata appear. Everything else is invisible. No writes, no bulk actions, no admin operations — read-only by design.

Session Flow

identify_user → init_session → list_accessible_models → read_module_summary / read_module_detail

1. identify_user — discover which workspaces the credentials can access
2. init_session — scan all models, admit those passing the iron door, cache metadata
3. list_accessible_models — browse the cached models
4. read_module_summary — one-call rollup: resolves list dimensions to top-level items, reads aggregated data
5. read_module_detail — drill into a specific dimension slice

Setup

Prerequisites

• Node.js 18+
• Anaplan credentials (any of: username/password, OAuth client, or certificate)

Install

git clone https://github.com/larasrinath/anaplan-user-mcp.git
cd anaplan-user-mcp
npm install
npm run build

Configure Credentials

Set one of these authentication methods via environment variables:

Basic Auth:

export ANAPLAN_USERNAME="your-email@example.com"
export ANAPLAN_PASSWORD="your-password"

OAuth:

export ANAPLAN_CLIENT_ID="your-client-id"
export ANAPLAN_CLIENT_SECRET="your-client-secret"  # optional for device grant

Certificate:

export ANAPLAN_CERTIFICATE_PATH="/path/to/cert.pem"
export ANAPLAN_PRIVATE_KEY_PATH="/path/to/key.pem"

Add to Your MCP Client

Claude Desktop / Claude Code — add to your MCP config:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "anaplan-user": {
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["/path/to/anaplan-user-mcp/dist/index.js"],
      "env": {
        "ANAPLAN_USERNAME": "your-email@example.com",
        "ANAPLAN_PASSWORD": "your-password"
      }
    }
  }
}

Or run directly:

npm start

The server communicates over stdio using the MCP protocol.

Development

npm run dev          # Run with tsx (no build step)
npm run build        # Compile TypeScript → dist/
npm run typecheck    # Type-check without emitting

Architecture

src/
├── auth/            # Token lifecycle (basic, certificate, OAuth)
├── api/             # Read-only Anaplan API wrappers
├── session/         # Iron-door cache (types + SessionCacheManager)
├── tools/           # 5 MCP tools + table formatter
├── transport/       # stdio transport (content-length + line framing)
├── server.ts        # McpServer factory
└── index.ts         # Entry point

The auth layer, HTTP client, and transport are shared with anaplan-mcp. API modules have write methods removed.

Preparing an Anaplan Model

For a model to be accessible through this server:

1. Create a module named AI Model Metadata in the model
2. Create a module named AI Module Metadata in the model
3. Tag line items you want to expose with AI LI Metadata

Only tagged line items in models with both sentinel modules will appear in the session cache.

License

MIT