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Enhance Your AL Development with the AL MCP Server

The AL MCP server is a Model Context Protocol server that exposes tools allowing AI agents to download symbols, build, compile, and publish AL projects directly. It enables agents like GitHub Copilot to verify their own code changes automatically, removing the need for manual compilation steps between AI suggestions and deployment.

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DvlprLife.com

post DvlprLife.com

Brad Prendergast · 2026-08-21 · 1,112 words · about 5 min

"Once an agent can call these tools, it can verify its own work. It can compile, read the errors, fix them and try again."
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Key points

  • The AL MCP server ships with the AL development tools and gives AI agents tools to download symbols, build, compile, publish, search symbols, get diagnostics, list dependencies and sign in to cloud environments.
  • Setup needs the AL Language extension (which provides altool) and the .NET 8 runtime, and altool may need to be on PATH. Registering the server with workspace scope writes .vscode/mcp.json, which can be committed and shared.
  • With these tools an agent can compile, read errors and fix its own code, so the developer no longer passes results between Copilot and the compiler.
  • Copilot also has the AL Language extension’s own tools and tends to prefer them. Users can review and toggle which tools are available.
  • In the demo, plain Copilot built a Region table and page plus Customer table and page extensions, compiled them and published them. Results can vary between runs, and custom instructions or agents make them more consistent.

Quotes

  • “Once an agent can call these tools, it can verify its own work. It can compile, read the errors, fix them and try again.” (This describes the core value: AI agents become autonomous developers that can self-correct instead of requiring human review between suggestions and compilation.)
  • “You stop being the middleman between Copilot and the compiler.” (Summarizes the transformational benefit: developers are freed from manual compilation cycles and can focus on higher-level design decisions.)

Context

  • Features: AL MCP server, symbol download, project compilation, application publishing, code verification, diagnostics retrieval, symbol search, authentication

Source: DvlprLife, community blog. Summary, key points and quotes are derived (CONTENT-NOTICE.md); read the original for the full text.