MCP Servers for Roadie, AI Search enters beta, vibe code your own UI inside Roadie, and the launch of the Scheduler page

The latest features and updates from Roadie.

Roadie MCP Server(s) for your LLM-powered Applications

We’re launching a set of Model Context Protocol servers that can provide data to any LLM-powered MCP client that can accept authenticated external servers, like Cursor or VSCode with Copilot.

For those not au fait with the current boom in MCP server creation, MCP is a protocol created by Anthropic last year to help standardise the way data is sent to LLMs and how models can access tools. Via an MCP server (or servers) you can give LLM-powered application access to data and tools that the foundational LLMs could never have.

It’s a client-server architecture, so you can then connect those MCP servers to whatever MCP client you wish. MCP clients range from chat interfaces like the Claude App to full blown AI IDEs like Cursor.

Now you can, from the comfort of your IDE or MCP client, do all kinds of things:

Access Catalog entity data, relationships, and documentation
Find, validate, and execute scaffolder templates
Discover and retrieve API documentation and specifications to build API clients
Access Tech Insights fact data (TI subscription needed, of course)

All you need to get going is an API token from Roadie and away you go.

Full docs for all released MCP servers can be found here: https://roadie.io/docs/details/roadie-mcp/

AI-enabled search [in beta]

In 2024 we open-source the RAG AI plugin to make AI features in Backstage as widely available as possible.

Implementing those features in Roadie though has taken some time. We wanted to generally improve search before bringing AI into the mix. With OpenSearch powered search results now fully rolled out, we turned out attention to integrating the RAG AI plugin fully into our search.

You can:

Ask natural language questions of your Tech Docs and Catalog, like Summarise the Streelight service API docs or How does the Streelight service interact with other services?
Focus on a specific Doc or Catalog entity to narrow results and ask detail questions only about that specific entity.

General availability expected in September / October.

AI Search

Vibe code your own UI inside Roadie with MDX [in beta]

As part of a Support task, we accidentally allowed anyone to vibe code their own UI inside Roadie.

That might sound silly, but hear me out…

To cover a simple use-case of ‘I just want to call and API and render some data back’ we exposed an ApiViewerCard to call an API from the frontend (as long as you have a proxy configured for that call).

Then we added MDX configurability to that card and it morphed into the MdxPluginCard.

Then we exposed some common Roadie components to make it easier to compose a card that looked and felt at home in the rest of the UI.

When you put it all together (as some early customers have now started to do) you get some fairly nice cards that do exactly what you need them to.

Not only that, given the widespread use of MDX, you can also get an LLM to vibe code them for you.

For simple use-cases where you don’t want to build a full custom plugin, but you do want some ability to pull in data that is not currently supported by a card or plugin: this is your guy.

The next step in this direction? The MDX can be fully generated from prompts inside Roadie, so you don’t even have to leave your instance.

Then fully generated entity page layouts…

The future is now…

Simple My Groups MDX card

Tasks now exposed via the Scheduler

To take a small step back from AI-AI-AI-AI, ALL THE TIME, EVERYWHERE, we also introduced a new Scheduler page to the Admin interface. This allows you to see the active jobs and self-serve re-triggering them if necessary.

We’re continuing to expose Admin controls like this as a necessary part of an AI work. As AI starts to take over Roadie, we want Platform teams to have more control and visibility, not less.

Scheduler

Improved Launch Darkly plugin

The Launch Darkly plugin we span up last year was looking a little lacklustre and so we’ve spruced it up.

For those that use Launch Darkly for feature flag management:

There’s now a card displaying environment statuses for each feature flag
Updated visual indicators for feature flag status (pills rather than text)
A general spruce of the card UI to make it easier to understand what’s happening at a glance

launchdarkly-plugin-card

More info can be found in the docs: https://roadie.io/docs/integrations/launchdarkly/

Anything else?

No.