Build on CAP
Before you build, check what is there. If you find something close, think about contributing to it. If you find nothing, start building.
Check what is there
Search by the use case, not by a package name: the same need often sits under a capability you would not guess. The capability map and Browse hold everything in CAP.
Found something? Contribute
Where an artifact does most of what you need, a fix, a test or a page of documentation reaches everyone who already uses it. Read where it stops and its open and closed issues first: someone may have asked already. Then contribute to a project. These are the places where evidence or a second hand counts most.
Not known yet
- Access an external system through an application MCP service
Not known yet for cap-mcp-bridge, 1 of 3 artifacts cover it
- Access an external system through an application MCP service
Not known yet for @gavdi/cap-mcp, cap-mcp-plugin, @neoimpulse/cap-js-mcp, cap-mcp-bridge, 1 of 6 artifacts cover it
- Answer a user's question inside the application
Not known yet for a2a-plugin, 3 of 4 artifacts cover it
- Cache a remote service response
Not known yet for @sap/cds, 2 of 3 artifacts cover it
- Cache the result of a function call
Not known yet for @sap/cds, 1 of 2 artifacts cover it
- Carry a vocabulary SAP does not ship into the OData metadata
Not known yet for urp-vocab, 1 of 2 artifacts cover it
- Change which model a CAP service calls
Not known yet for @jerome-benoit/sap-ai-provider, 4 of 5 artifacts cover it
- Handle a draft's own events apart from the active entity's
Not known yet for cds-routing-handlers, 3 of 4 artifacts cover it
- Keep attachment content out of the application database
Not known yet for cap-attachments-plus, 4 of 5 artifacts cover it
- Keep data access out of a CAP service's handlers
Not known yet for @sap/cds, 3 of 4 artifacts cover it
- Keep version history for an attached document
Not known yet for com.sap.cds:cds-feature-attachments, 1 of 5 artifacts cover it
- Reach every UI app of a CAP project from one page while developing
Not known yet for cds-launchpad-plugin, 2 of 3 artifacts cover it
- Receive messages from an Apache Kafka topic
Not known yet for @sap/cds, com.sap.cds:cds-feature-kafka, 5 of 7 artifacts cover it
- See what the browser did before the request arrived
Not known yet for @cap-js/telemetry, 1 of 2 artifacts cover it
- See where a slow request spent its time
Not known yet for opentelemetry-cds, 2 of 3 artifacts cover it
- Serve a UI5 CLI project from the CAP server while developing
Not known yet for @sap/cds, 2 of 3 artifacts cover it
- Serve repeated reads of a rarely written entity from a cache
Not known yet for @sap/cds, 2 of 3 artifacts cover it
- Split one CAP service implementation into a class per entity
Not known yet for cds-hyper-app-service, 5 of 6 artifacts cover it
- Stream a model's answer out of a CAP service
Not known yet for @cap-js/agents, 4 of 5 artifacts cover it
- Upload an attachment from a client that is not SAP Fiori elements
Not known yet for com.sap.cds:cds-feature-attachments, 3 of 4 artifacts cover it
One artifact stands
- Analytical models@sap/cds-analytics
- Analytical queries@sap/cds
- Change promotiongit-env-branches
- Deployment and operator@sap_oss/vscode-mta-tools
- Document extractionSAP Document AI
- GraphQL@cap-js/graphql
- Health checks@sap/cds
- Importing and exporting table datacds-spreadsheetimporter-plugin
- In-app guidancecap-companion
- UI5 dev servercds-plugin-ui5
- Location servicescap-js-geoloc-plugin
- Malware scanningSAP Malware Scanning service
- Secrets rotationSAP Credential Store
- Server-side renderingui5-cap-serverside-rendering-plugin
- Temporal data@sap/cds
- Vulnerability scanningaudit-summary
- WebSocket@cap-js-community/websocket
- XML payloads@neoimpulse/cap-js-xml-protocol
Nothing there? Build
Use cases no recorded artifact covers, and capabilities with no artifact in CAP. Unmapped means the atlas holds nothing, not that nothing exists: search once more, then build a plugin.
Use cases nothing covers
Every assessed use case in CAP has an artifact that covers it.
Capabilities with no artifact
Read in the atlas
- DRY CAP – Making Sustainable Solutions Through PluginsDRY CAP – Making Sustainable Solutions Through PluginsA Devtoberfest 2026 building-apps session on packaging the things you would otherwise write twice, from in-house API clients and shared data models to validation logic, as a CAP plugin. The presenter builds one live: a cds-plugin.js next to package.json is what makes CAP notice the plugin at all, an index.cds carries a reusable user context and service that the consuming application projects into its own and protects there, and the plugin registers an Express middleware at a chosen step of the bootstrap to put user properties on the request. A feature-flagging plugin his team already uses closes it, and the whole walkthrough is the edge to Plugin authoring.SAP Developers, published 2026-10-02
- What's in Daniel Hutzel's brain?What's in Daniel Hutzel's brain?A Devtoberfest 2026 session in the building-apps track, in which Daniel Hutzel and DJ Adams work through what the CAP team is building for agents. A bookshop gets an MCP endpoint beside its OData one from a single annotation, with the plugin writing the coding agent's configuration itself; in the xt-travels sample five services that know nothing about each other are served over MCP and an agent does the orchestration the hand-built UI and its value helps used to do. Hutzel then annotates a service as an agent so the ReAct loop and the choice of model move into the CAP service, and finally drops MCP for a skill that teaches the agent CQL instead, which is where the edges to Serve your application over MCP, Agent tooling and Agent guidance come from. The mechanism under all of it, a plugin file in the package root and event handlers that can be added to any CAP service, is the edge to Plugin authoring.published 2026-10-02
- Create your first CAP pluginCreate your first CAP pluginA step-by-step guide to the cds-plugin.js extension point: scaffold a package, add an index.cds for shared model artifacts, and test it locally against a throwaway CAP project before publishing to npm, with a separate section on building the same plugin in TypeScript and compiling it with tsc. Points to the author's own cds-plugin-handlers and ui5-cap-serverside-rendering-plugin as worked examples.published 2024-12-09
- SAP AI Services - DOX - Gen AI with SAP CAP Plugin - Part 3SAP AI Services - DOX - Gen AI with SAP CAP Plugin - Part 3Building on Reusable components for CAP with cds-plugin by Daniel Schlachter, this part walks through a custom CAP plugin — a cds-plugin.js plus a lib_cap_dox.js helper — that authenticates against SAP's Document Information Extraction (DOX) service and calls its schema and job-status APIs to fill an entity from extracted document fields. It covers reading the service key from Cloud Foundry (cf service-key) for the OAuth token endpoint, and dynamically mapping DOX's header and line-item output onto CAP entity properties.sabarna17, published 2024-06-11
- CAP Initializr: Generate SAP CAP Projects in SecondsCAP Initializr: Generate SAP CAP Projects in SecondsA hosted project generator for CAP in the shape of Spring Initializr — pick the structure, dependencies and configuration in a browser and download the result, rather than running cds init and then wiring the facets by hand. The post is an MVP announcement asking for feedback, and the tool lives at a Cloud Foundry trial URL rather than on npm, so it is a direction being tested in public rather than something to depend on.Saptarshi017, published 2026-03-23
- Part 1: How to create CAPM project in BASPart 1: How to create CAPM project in BASThe claim in the opening is the interesting part — database, service and UI without switching technologies — and then the project that follows from it. Part one, and it stops at a project that runs.Vennilla00, published 2026-03-05
- UI5 MCP Server Got Extended for UI Integration Cards GenerationUI5 MCP Server Got Extended for UI Integration Cards GenerationVersion 0.2.1 of the UI5 MCP Server adds three tools for UI Integration Cards: get_integration_cards_guidelines feeds an agent current best practices and API versions, create_integration_card scaffolds a new card project, and run_manifest_validation checks the generated manifest against the schema. The post frames these as closing the same gaps as the server's existing tools — an LLM's outdated or wrong card API knowledge — this time for scaffolding and validating a card rather than a full app.daniel_vladinov, published 2026-01-22
- Prompt-Driven Development: Building Full-Stack SAP CAP Apps from User StoriesPrompt-Driven Development: Building Full-Stack SAP CAP Apps from User StoriesA user story in, a scaffolded full-stack CAP application out, through SAP Build Code and Joule. The question it is actually asking is how much of the foundational code is worth generating, and it answers by generating all of it.AnuradhaDhingan, published 2025-12-11