Schulcloud-MCP/CLAUDE.md

# CLAUDE.md

Guidance for Claude Code when working in this repository.

## What this is

Read-only access to a Schulcloud (HPI Schul-Cloud / Schulcloud-Verbund-Software)
account: courses, column boards, lessons, tasks, files with text extraction, and
a Postgres-backed full-text index. TypeScript, Node 22+,
`@modelcontextprotocol/sdk`.

Three entry points over one core:
- `src/bin/http.ts` — Streamable HTTP + `/api`, the deployed form, behind Caddy on a Pi.
- `src/bin/stdio.ts` — stdio, for local Claude Code / Desktop use.
- `src/bin/cli.ts` — the `schulcloud` CLI, which talks to the HTTP server, never
  to Schulcloud.

## Commands

```bash
npm run build       # tsc → dist/ (also copies store/migrations/*.sql)
npm run dev         # watch mode, runs src/ directly via type stripping
npm test            # unit tests (node:test), no network
npm run typecheck
npm run probe       # verify token + API assumptions against the LIVE instance
npm run smoke       # full end-to-end: real server + real MCP client + real data
npm run keepalive-status   # is the deployed container holding its session?
npm run session-diagnose   # ~2.5h: measure what actually ends the session
```

`docker-compose.override.yml` is local-only and publishes the server on
`127.0.0.1:8080` (or `MCP_HOST_PORT`) and Postgres on `127.0.0.1:55432`; see
`docs/LOCAL.md`. When `.env` points at the live account, test against the local
instance only through `local-instance/scripts/mcp-env.sh`: it pins its own
database (`schulcloud_local`) and mirror, so fixtures cannot reach the live
index.

`probe` and `smoke` hit the live Schulcloud and need a valid `.env`. Both are
read-only with respect to Schulcloud. Run `smoke` after touching `src/core/`,
`src/mcp/` or `src/http/` — the unit tests cover only pure functions.

Run smoke **both ways**: with `DATABASE_URL` set (69 checks, index-backed) and
without (67 checks, live-only). The degradation path is a supported mode, not a
fallback nobody exercises.

Store tests need a database and skip without one:
`TEST_DATABASE_URL=postgresql://… npm test`. They use a real Postgres on
purpose — the generation/diff semantics are entirely SQL, so a mock would test
nothing. **They `TRUNCATE`**, and refuse to run unless the database name
contains "test"; that guard exists because pointing them at the dev database
once put fixtures into real data.

## Architecture

```
bin/{http,stdio}.ts ─┬─ mcp/server.ts ── mcp/tools/*, mcp/{resources,prompts}.ts
                     └─ http/{server,api,auth}.ts        /mcp and /api
                          │
bin/cli.ts ──HTTP──────────┘   cli/{config,client,sync}.ts

           services.ts  (process-wide: client, Store, Indexer)
                │
   indexer/indexer.ts ── store/store.ts ── Postgres
                │
            core/{client,board,crawl,extract,text,paths,types}
```

- **`core/`** knows nothing of MCP, HTTP or the CLI.
  - `client.ts` — every upstream call; `GET`-only except `extendSession`.
  - `board.ts` — a column board needs three kinds of call to reconstruct.
  - **`crawl.ts`** — the one traversal. Search, the indexer, the what-changed
    diff and the file mirror all need it; keep it here, not in a tool.
  - `paths.ts` — the security boundary for mirrored filenames. See Invariants.
  - `legacy-files.ts` — the file manager ("Dateien": Persönliche, Kurs-, Team-,
    Geteilte Dateien) as one path tree, parsed from the legacy client's pages.
    A separate store from files-storage; the `fs_*` tools and `/api/fs` sit on it.
- **`store/`** — crawl generations, identity diffs, `german` + `pg_trgm` FTS.
  `Store.open` returns `undefined` when Postgres is down; callers degrade.
- **`indexer/`** — crawl → persist → mirror bytes → extract text → index.
  Coalesces concurrent refreshes; enforces a minimum interval. The crawl walks
  topic-attached tasks too, which the course page does not list: without that
  they are unsearchable and their grades invisible. `INDEX_PERSONAL_FILES`
  additionally indexes personal files and submitted/returned work, including
  grade comments — that is what makes "what got graded this week" answerable,
  at roughly three extra requests per task.
- **`mcp/tools/*.ts`** — tool descriptions are prompts: they are how Claude picks
  a tool, so they carry the German domain terms (Kurse, Themen, Aufgaben) and say
  when *not* to use the tool.
- **`mcp/resources.ts`, `mcp/prompts.ts`** — courses and rooms as resources a
  person attaches, carrying exactly `readCourse`/`readRoom`, the functions behind
  `get_course`/`get_room`; and two prompts. What people read in a picker (labels,
  prompt texts) is German; what the model reads stays English.
- **`context.ts`** — per-session state. Only `/me` is cached, because the school
  id is on every files-storage path and cannot change for a token.

## Invariants

**Everything that touches Schulcloud is read-only.** Every client method is a
`GET` except `extendSession` (the keepalive's `refresh-session` call, which
touches only our own session and is not exposed as a tool, so no model-driven
call can be a POST). `api_get` rejects non-`/api/` paths and anything carrying a
scheme or host. **Against the legacy client, GET-only is not enough:**
`GET /files/share/` mints a share token and `GET /files/file?share=` grants a
permission, so `getFileManagerPage` allows only the listing routes, by pattern —
widen that pattern only with a route you have read the handler of. A pre-signed
download URL is fetched with **no** credentials: it names another host, and
neither the bearer nor the `jwt` cookie may go with it. `refresh_index` and `POST /api/refresh` write only to the Pi's
own index and mirror — every upstream call they make is still a GET.

**Filenames from Schulcloud are untrusted paths.** Course titles, card titles
and filenames are all user-supplied upstream, and both the server's mirror and
the CLI's sync turn them into filesystem paths. Everything goes through
`core/paths.ts`: `safeComponent` reduces one string to one safe component, and
`resolveWithin` refuses anything that escapes the root. Do not bypass them with
`path.join`, and keep the property that no `..` survives anywhere in a
component — it is what makes the invariant checkable. The endpoint
is internet-facing by necessity, so "a leaked token cannot act as the user" is
the property that makes that acceptable. Do not add a write tool without the
user explicitly asking for one and understanding this.

**Never log or echo secrets.** `TSC_JWT_COOKIE` grants full read access to the
account; `MCP_AUTH_TOKEN` guards the endpoint. Neither belongs in
logs, error messages, or tool output. `.env` is git-ignored — keep it that way.

**Live behaviour beats upstream source.** The clones in `vendor/` track `main`
and may be ahead of what is deployed. When they disagree with the instance, the
instance is right. `docs/API.md` records which is which.

## API gotchas

These cost real time to discover; `docs/API.md` has the full list with evidence.

- Course contents are at `GET /api/v3/course-rooms/{courseId}/board`. There is
  no `GET /api/v3/courses/{id}`, and `:roomId` there is the *course* id.
- **Rooms ("Räume") are a separate space from courses, and the UI's naming is a
  trap**: the sidebar's *Kurse* entry links to `/rooms/courses-overview` and
  lists courses; *Räume* links to `/rooms` and lists rooms. A `/rooms/...` url
  says nothing about which. `list_rooms`/`get_room` cover the latter; a room
  holds boards only — no lessons, no tasks. Empty is normal and is also what a
  revoked membership looks like.
- Room boards report `isVisible`, which the course-page projection does not, so
  a room's drafts can be named as drafts instead of being tried and 403ing.
- `limit` is rejected above 100 though the spec says 99. Page at 99; the client
  clamps and `listAllCourses` pages for you.
- There is no `GET /tasks/{id}`, and the task lists omit `description` — it
  only exists on the course page's task element. `get_task` does that join.
- **`GET /cards?ids=` takes at most 20 ids** (the `qs` `arrayLimit` default), and
  fails above that with a validation error that blames the ids rather than their
  number. `MAX_IDS_PER_QUERY` in `core/client.ts`. Any board over 20 cards is
  affected, which is common.
- **Never swallow a per-item crawl error.** Board failures used to be caught and
  dropped, so the index lost whole boards while the crawl reported success —
  which is how the 20-id limit went unnoticed. They go into `Snapshot.failures`.
- **Record failures by kind, or transient ones become permanent.** Every failed
  file used to be marked done, so a timeout was never retried. A *download*
  failure is now recorded with `retry: true` and the next crawl tries again; an
  *extraction* failure is final. Two causes found on the first full crawl of a
  real account: downloads bounded by the 30 s request timeout (11 MB scans cut
  off mid-transfer — downloads now time out on 30 s of *silence*), and PDF text
  containing NUL, which Postgres `text` refuses — stripped in `recordFileText`.
- **A full crawl can outlast one HTTP request.** The first one with the file
  manager took 14 minutes (every file downloaded once); Node's fetch abandons a
  response without headers after 5. `POST /api/refresh` takes `wait: false` and
  the CLI polls `/api/status`; `refresh_index` returns after 50 s and leaves the
  crawl running. Don't reintroduce a caller that waits on a full crawl inline.
- **`GET /lessons/{id}/tasks` is a bare array whose items carry no id.** Not the
  `{data,total}` envelope, and `LessonLinkedTaskResponse` has no id field at
  all. A topic-attached task is thus unidentifiable from the API and invisible
  in both task lists once past due — 18 of 60 tasks on the real account.
  `core/lesson-page.ts` scrapes the ids off the legacy topic page.
- **Collaborative text editor (Etherpad) contents are reachable, in two hops.**
  `GET /api/v3/collaborative-text-editor/content-element/{id}` returns the pad
  url *and* sets an Etherpad `sessionID` cookie; `/etherpad/p/{id}/export/txt`
  then returns the text. No Etherpad API key needed. `core/etherpad.ts` checks
  the url's host before sending the cookie to it.
- **A draft board is listed on the course page but 403s when opened.** Say "not
  published yet", not "no access".
- **File records are mutable**: `PATCH /file/rename/{id}` keeps the id and size,
  so the store's digest has to include the name.
- **Submissions: only `GET /submissions/status/task/{taskId}` exists.** No list,
  no fetch-by-id, and the payload has no submitted text, grade comment or
  graded-at. Don't imply absent feedback means none was given.
- **`/api/v1` is partly served, and it is production surface.** Exactly three
  legacy routes survive in the deployment's own ingress table
  (`dof_app_deploy/ansible/group_vars/all/x_ingress.yml`): **`/api/v1/courses`,
  `/api/v1/users`, `/api/v1/classes`**. Everything else under `/api/v1` is
  unrouted and 404s. They matter because v3 dropped things they still carry:
  `courses` has the description, `teacherIds`, `userIds` and `times` (the weekly
  timetable), and `users/{id}` is the **only** way to turn a user id into a name
  — submission `submitters`, file `creatorId` and course `teacherIds` are
  otherwise unreadable. Permission is per-account: a teacher may read their
  students, a student may read only themselves, so name resolution must degrade
  to "not visible to this account" rather than printing a bare id.
- **The teacher's homework page is a different page from the student's.** Its
  tabs are `extended` and `submissions`, not `submission` and `feedback`, and
  the grade lives in the grading *form* (`name="grade"`, `name="gradeComment"`,
  one block per `submissionId`) rather than in rendered prose. The student
  parser finds nothing on it, which is why a teacher account reported every
  graded submission as "neither a percentage nor feedback was found" while the
  data was plainly there. `parseTeacherGrading` handles that side.
- **A grade is a percentage (`Number` 0-100) or absent; there is no text grade.**
  Teachers commonly grade with `gradeComment` alone, so "graded by feedback" is
  a complete answer. `formatGradeState` in `mcp/tools/submissions.ts` owns that
  wording — don't reintroduce "no numeric grade recorded", which reads as a
  fault.
- **Submitted text and grade comments are scraped, not fetched.** No API
  exposes them; the legacy page `GET /homework/{taskId}` renders them, and it
  authenticates by `jwt` **cookie**, not bearer. `core/homework-page.ts` parses
  it on `data-testid` hooks and every field is optional — a markup change must
  degrade to "not found", never break `get_task`.
- **files-storage listing ignores the `parentType` path segment** — filter on
  each record's own `parentType`, or submission files get reported as grading
  files.
- **Board file elements carry no file id.** Files are found by listing
  files-storage with `parentType: 'boardnodes'` and the *element* id as
  `parentId`. Same for `fileFolder` and `drawing`.
- Files live in a separate service (`/api/v3/file/*`, repo `file-storage`) with
  its own OpenAPI document. It is not in the main `docs-json`.
- Legacy lesson responses return ids as `{buffer:{data:[...]}}`; use
  `normalizeObjectId`.
- **`updatedAt` on the course-board projection is the request time**, not a
  modification time — two reads seconds apart differ. Never build change
  detection on it; the store diffs crawl generations by identity instead. The
  dedicated endpoints (`/boards/{id}`, `/cards`, file records) are stable.
- Many course PDFs are **image-only scans with no text layer** (3 of 4 sampled),
  so extraction legitimately yields nothing. `extract.ts` detects this and says
  so; do not "fix" it by retrying. `download_file` then falls back to
  `GET /file/preview/...`, which renders the page as a picture Claude can read —
  the answer for a scan, though it still leaves the file unsearchable.
- **The preview endpoint has two enums, and both 400 without saying so.**
  `width` accepts only **50, 150 or 500** — a number outside that set is a
  validation error naming the value but not the permitted set. `outputFormat`
  accepts only **`image/webp`**; omitting it is worse than wrong, because the
  preview is then rendered in the *source* format and a PDF comes back as a
  PDF. The response also labels itself `webp` rather than `image/webp`, so the
  content type has to be normalised before anything will treat it as an image.
- **A room's `allowedOperations` is an object, not a list.** Every operation is
  present with a boolean; `false` means denied. Typing it as `string[]`
  type-checks and throws `.some is not a function` the moment anything reads it.
- **Schulcloud has no quiz of its own.** There is no quiz module or endpoint
  upstream: interactive exercises are H5P elements, whose `contentId` is the
  only handle onto the content, or external (LTI) tools behind
  `contextExternalToolId`. Say that rather than looking for a quiz API.
- **The file manager is a third store, reachable only as HTML.** Persönliche,
  Kurs-, Team- and Geteilte Dateien live in the legacy `files` collection, not in
  files-storage: `list_files` answers 0 for a course holding dozens of
  worksheets, and 21 of 26 live courses keep material there. Its Feathers service
  is not in the ingress, so listings are parsed from `/files/{my,courses,teams,shared}`
  pages and downloads go through `GET /files/signedurl` (JSON). Folders are
  addressed by id alone — `/files/courses/{course}/{folder}` at any depth.
  `permittedDirectories` returns every course with **no** folders (it queries
  `refOwnerModel: 'courses'`, records say `'course'`), and `/files/search/` 504s,
  so walk listings. Course names contain `/`; resolve by joining segments. A
  listing page that does not parse must throw, never read as an empty folder —
  "0 files" is the bug this exists to fix. `docs/API.md` has the evidence.
- **Teams cannot be read at any version.** v3 exposes only
  `GET /team/{teamId}/news`; upstream `main`'s teams controller is write-only
  (`POST :teamId/create-room`). `/teams` is the legacy client's HTML page, not
  an API. A team's *files* are reachable, through the file manager (`/teams/<team>`).
- **`exp` (30 days) is not the session lifetime.** The binding limit is a Valkey
  whitelist entry with a `JWT_TIMEOUT_SECONDS` TTL (7200s; live value at
  `GET /api/v3/config/public`) that every authenticated request re-sets.
  `src/keepalive.ts` holds it open — don't remove it.
- **A Schulportal tab left open revokes our token.** The `jwt` cookie *is* the
  browser's session token, same `jti`. The front end runs a client-side timer
  (reset only on route change, never from the server TTL) and calls
  `/logout?auto-logout=true` ~2h after login, which issues `POST /api/v3/logout`
  and deletes the shared key. No keepalive can prevent it; the fix is to close
  the tab. This produced two false conclusions before being found — if a token
  dies ~2h after login, suspect an open tab first. `docs/AUTH.md` has the chain.

## Conventions

- Imports use `.ts` extensions; `rewriteRelativeImportExtensions` makes `tsc`
  emit `.js`. This lets `node --watch src/bin/http.ts` run the tree directly.
- **No TypeScript parameter properties** (`constructor(private readonly x: T)`).
  Node's type stripping rejects them, which breaks `npm run dev` and `npm test`.
  Declare the field and assign it in the constructor body instead.
- Tabs for indentation, single quotes, trailing commas.
- Comments explain *why* — an API quirk, a security property, a trade-off — not
  what the line does. Several such comments encode findings that are expensive
  to rediscover; do not strip them.
- Tool failures return `isError: true` with an actionable message via
  `mcp/tools/result.ts`. `toToolError` separates 401 (token expired — the user must
  act) from 403 (no access) from 404 (bad id) deliberately; keep that split.

## Adding a tool

1. Add the client method in `core/client.ts` (`GET` only).
2. Register the tool in the relevant `mcp/tools/*.ts`, with a description that
   says when to use it *and when not to*.
3. Format output as Markdown, keeping ids visible for follow-up calls.
4. If it reads the index, handle `context.store === undefined` with a message
   saying what is unavailable and what still works.
5. Add a check to `scripts/smoke.mjs` and run `npm run smoke` both ways.

## Resources and prompts

Claude Code is the client these are tested in, and it shapes them. Read from its
bundle (2.1.272), not its docs:

- **A prompt command's arguments are split on whitespace, and extra words are
  dropped** (`zipObject(argNames, input.split(/\s+/))`). A value of several words
  can only arrive joined, so `argumentText` turns `_` back into spaces and reads
  `-` as "skipped"; course names match by fragments (`resolveTarget`). Any new
  free-text argument needs the same treatment.
- **The @ autocomplete fuzzy-matches `name` but displays `description`**, falling
  back to the name only when there is none — a description must carry the name.
- **An @-mention resolves only URIs from `resources/list`**; a template alone
  cannot be mentioned. `McpServer` returns every template's listing in one reply
  and ignores cursors, which suits a few dozen entries and not the file manager.
- **Throw `ProtocolError`, not `McpError`**: McpError prefixes its message with
  "MCP error <code>:", the client prefixes it again, and people read both.
- A resource listing that fails yields no entries rather than an error: one
  refused kind would otherwise cost the whole reply.

## Environment

`.env` holds `TSC_URL`, `TSC_JWT_COOKIE`, `MCP_AUTH_TOKEN`. See `.env.example`
for the full set and `docs/AUTH.md` for refreshing the JWT. `npm run probe`
reports both clocks: days until hard expiry and seconds of idle budget left.