TIA Portal Openness MCP Server

MCP (Model Context Protocol) server for Siemens TIA Portal Openness, plus a companion CLI for release installation and updates.

What this repository contains

• TiaPortalMcpServer/: C# MCP server (target framework: net48) exposing TIA Portal engineering operations as MCP tools.
• TiaPortalMcpServer.Tests/: unit and integration tests for tool contracts and server behavior.
• cli/: TypeScript CLI for installing server releases and managing companion skills.

Key capabilities

The server provides tool groups for:

• project lifecycle (projects_create, projects_open, projects_open_with_upgrade, projects_save, projects_close, projects_get_session_info)
• hardware and device management (devices_list, devices_create, devices_delete, devices_get_attributes, devices_set_attribute, devices_get_app_id, devices_set_app_id, devices_search_catalog)
• device item management (deviceitems_list, deviceitems_get_attributes, deviceitems_plug_move, deviceitems_copy, deviceitems_delete, catalog_search_device_items)
• PLC software and block operations (software_add_block, blocks_list, software_get_block_hierarchy)
• tag and tag-table management (tags_create, tags_list, tags_tagtable_create, tags_tagtable_list, tags_tagtable_get, tags_tagtable_delete, tags_tagtable_export, tags_tagtable_open_editor, tags_group_create, tags_group_list, tags_group_find, tags_group_delete, tags_group_system_get, tags_constants_user_list, tags_constants_system_list)
• advanced block operations (external sources, ProDiag, UDTs, types, editor helpers — 19 tools in BlocksTools)
• compilation (compilation_project, compilation_software)
• file import and validation (files_read_csv, files_read_excel, files_list_sheets, files_validate_format, files_get_info)
• HMI targets (hmi_targets_list, hmi_targets_get, hmi_targets_validate)
• sampling/LLM-assisted operations (sampling_generate_code, sampling_summarize_project, sampling_get_suggestions)
• elicitation and utility helpers (utilities_elicit_user_input, utilities_get_project_info, utilities_list_libraries)

All active tools are declared in TiaPortalMcpServer/Tools/.

Runtime model

• Transport: MCP over stdio.
• Host process: .NET console app using Microsoft.Extensions.Hosting.
• Tool discovery: attribute-based ([McpServerToolType], [McpServerTool]).
• Logging: Serilog to stderr and rolling file logs (TiaPortalMcpServer/logs/).

Requirements

• Windows machine.
• Siemens TIA Portal V20 installed and licensed.
• User account in the TIA Portal Openness Users group.
• .NET Framework 4.8 runtime/developer pack (for building/running net48 project).

Build and run

From repository root:

dotnet build tia-portal-openness-mcpserver.sln
dotnet run --project TiaPortalMcpServer/TiaPortalMcpServer.csproj

Test

dotnet test TiaPortalMcpServer.Tests/TiaPortalMcpServer.Tests.csproj

Unit tests only:

dotnet test TiaPortalMcpServer.Tests/TiaPortalMcpServer.Tests.csproj --filter "Category!=Integration"

Integration tests only:

dotnet test TiaPortalMcpServer.Tests/TiaPortalMcpServer.Tests.csproj --filter "Category=Integration"

MCP Inspector

npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector dotnet run --project TiaPortalMcpServer/TiaPortalMcpServer.csproj

CLI quick start

The companion CLI is in cli/ and is intended for npm/npx workflows.

npx @chewcw/tia-portal-openness-mcpserver install --server-version v1.0.0

Environment variables used by the CLI:

• GITHUB_TOKEN (optional): token for authenticated GitHub API access.
• TIA_MCP_INSTALL_DIR (optional): override default install directory.
• TIA_MCP_AGENT_TYPE (optional): override agent type detection.
• TIA_MCP_SKILLS_PATH (optional): override skills installation path.

The CLI auto-detects the agent type from OPENCODE_SESSION_ID, OPENCODE_ROOT, CLAUDE_AGENT_METADATA_FILE, or CURSOR_SESSION_ID.

See cli/README.md for full CLI contract and options.

Configuration

Server configuration lives in TiaPortalMcpServer/appsettings.json.

Current keys include:

• MCP:Host, MCP:Port (general MCP endpoint settings)
• FileHandling:MaxFileSizeMB, FileHandling:AllowedRootPaths
• Serilog logging levels and sinks

CI/build constraint

This project depends on Siemens Openness assemblies and cannot be built from public NuGet packages alone on generic hosted runners.

• Siemens.Engineering.dll must be resolvable via installed TIA Portal V20 or TiaPortalLocation.
• For CI, use a self-hosted Windows runner with TIA Portal V20 installed (or provide the required private assembly bundle).

Repository layout

.
|- TiaPortalMcpServer/          # MCP server
|- TiaPortalMcpServer.Tests/    # tests
|- cli/                         # release/install CLI
|- Taskfile.yml                 # convenience tasks (inspector/tests)
`- tia-portal-openness-mcpserver.sln