Open Sourcing the Future of Finance: Why ChatFin Labs Shared its NetSuite MCP
A deep dive into our GitHub repository netsuite-mcp and how developers can build custom AI agents for ERPs.
The vision of autonomous finance relies on one critical component: access to data. For too long, ERP systems have been walled gardens, making it difficult for modern AI agents to read, analyze, and act on financial records in real-time. Proprietary connectors and expensive integration platforms have slowed down innovation.
At ChatFin Labs, we believe the interface between AI and the ERP should be an open standard. That is why we have open-sourced our NetSuite Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, enabling developers everywhere to build secure, agentic workflows on top of NetSuite data.
Breaking Down the ERP Silo
Building AI agents for finance requires more than just a large language model; it requires context. The agent needs to know your chart of accounts, your vendor list, and your transaction history. Traditionally, this meant building custom API wrappers for every single project.
Our netsuite-mcp repository solves this by providing a standardized bridge. It allows AI clients, such as Claude Desktop or custom agents, to "speak" NetSuite's language natively. This removes the friction of building the plumbing and lets developers focus on the intelligence layer.
Technical Deep Dive: The NetSuite MCP
The project is built with TypeScript (89.6% of the codebase) to ensure type safety, which is critical when handling financial data structures. We designed the server to operate in two distinct modes to support different deployment scenarios.
The HTTP Server mode is perfect for web clients and traditional integrations, while the STDIO Server mode is optimized for local AI clients like Claude. This flexibility means a single codebase can power both your local development experiments and your production-grade web agents.
Comprehensive SuiteQL Support
One of the robust features of this open source tool is its support for SuiteQL. Rather than relying solely on rigid REST records, the MCP allows agents to execute complex queries. This enables questions like "Show me all invoices above $5,000 from last quarter related to marketing" to be translated into precise database calls.
By exposing this capability through a standardized protocol, we empower agents to perform deep analysis rather than just surface-level data retrieval.
Security First Architecture
Opening up an ERP requires strict security controls. The `netsuite-mcp` includes built-in support for OAuth 2.0 authentication, ensuring that the agent only has access to what it is explicitly granted. We also included CORS configuration to manage cross-origin requests safely.
The inclusion of Ngrok integration for development allows engineers to test webhooks and callbacks securely without exposing their local machines to the open internet unnecessarily.
Community Collaboration
We have already seen interest from the community, with forks and stars appearing shortly after release. By sharing this core infrastructure, we hope to reduce the duplication of effort across the fintech industry. Why rebuild the connector when we can improve it together?
Developers can now contribute to improving the schema, adding new transaction types, or optimizing the query performance, benefitting the entire ecosystem of finance AI builders.
Conclusion
The future of the CFO office is autonomous, but it cannot be built in a black box. Open protocols like the NetSuite MCP are the foundation upon which the next generation of financial analysis tools will be built.
We invite you to explore the code, build an agent, and join us in shaping the future of open finance.
Build With Us
Explore the NetSuite MCP repository on GitHub or join the ChatFin community.