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 @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, 2 of 3 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, 2 of 3 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
- 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, 4 of 5 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, 1 of 2 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
One artifact stands
- Analytical models@sap/cds-analytics
- Analytical queries@sap/cds
- Change promotiongit-env-branches
- Configuration@sap/cds
- Content filteringSAP AI Core
- 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
- Pagination and streaming@sap/cds
- Plugin authoring@sap/cds-dk
- Reference appscap-utils
- Secrets rotationSAP Credential Store
- Server-side renderingui5-cap-serverside-rendering-plugin
- Soft deletecds-softdelete-plugin
- Status flows@sap/cds
- Temporal data@sap/cds
- Transaction management@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
- Tell a client how long a served file stays fresh
None of 1 recorded artifacts covers it, under Caching
Capabilities with no artifact
Read in the atlas
- 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
- AI needs a foundation: A map of the plug-in ecosystem for CAPAI needs a foundation: A map of the plug-in ecosystem for CAPA map of the plug-ins for CAP (@sap/cds), official, community and independent, drawn across regions such as integration, performance and tooling, so that a team can see what exists to reuse and what it would have to build: the question plugin authoring answers from the other side. SAP's abstract places CAP at the centre of its AI strategy, with model context protocol support, and the map is offered as the foundation under that. A TechEd 2026 session (Tuesday 27 October, Community Theater, Berlin), presented by Mike Zaschka, written here from SAP's abstract; the recording is not yet published.