clover-mcp 0.7.0

MCP server for the Clover POS REST API — sales, inventory, orders, customers, and employees for small businesses

clover-mcp

MCP server for the Clover POS REST API — gives AI assistants (Claude, Cursor, etc.) read and safe-write access to a Clover merchant's sales, inventory, orders, and customers.

Status: v0.7.0 — 47 tools, 6 prompts, both auth modes, 240 tests. Runs locally (stdio, single merchant) or remotely over HTTP with OAuth, single- or multi-tenant (see docs/DEPLOY.md). Endpoint contracts are sandbox-verified in docs/endpoints.md.

⚠️ Independent project — not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Clover Network, LLC or Fiserv, Inc. "Clover" is a trademark of its respective owner and is used here only nominatively to describe interoperability. Provided as is, without warranty — see Legal & disclaimer.

What it can do

• Sales summaries, payment and refund reports
• Inventory lookups and low-stock alerts
• Order history and open-order inspection
• Customer search and creation
• Employee, shift, role, category, modifier, tax, tender, and device lookups; best-selling items
• Pricing config lookups: discount catalogue, tip-suggestion presets, default service charge
• Safe writes: update item prices, set stock quantities, create customers/items/categories/orders, add line items, update customers
• AI tools (reason via your client's model — the server holds no LLM key): sales briefings, reorder suggestions, anomaly detection, category suggestions, customer-message drafts
• Predefined prompt workflows: daily briefing, weekly sales report, inventory health check, end-of-day closeout, customer lookup, monthly tax summary

What it cannot do (by design): process refunds, capture payments, void charges, delete records. Those stay in the Clover dashboard.

Tools

Tool	Kind	Notes
get_merchant_info / get_merchant_properties	read	profile + POS config (banking fields never returned)
get_sales_summary	read	aggregated window (see Sales summary semantics)
list_payments / list_refunds / list_tenders	read	payments, refunds, tender types
list_orders / get_order / list_open_orders / list_order_types	read	order history + detail
list_items / get_item / list_low_stock_items	read	inventory + stock
list_categories / list_modifiers / list_taxes / list_item_groups / list_attributes / list_tags / list_discounts	read	catalog structure
list_tip_suggestions / get_default_service_charge	read	tip presets + service-charge config
list_devices / list_opening_hours / list_cash_events	read	terminals, hours, cash-drawer log
get_top_items	read	best-sellers by units in a window
list_employees / get_employee / list_shifts / list_active_shifts / list_roles	read	PINs never returned (EMPLOYEES_R)
search_customers / get_customer	read	cards never returned
whoami	read	multi-tenant identity diagnostic (no secrets)
summarize_sales / inventory_reorder_suggestions / detect_sales_anomalies / suggest_item_categories / draft_customer_message	AI	reason via your client's model; read-only suggestions
create_customer / update_customer	write	dup-check + dry_run; update confirms via elicitation
create_item / create_category / create_order / add_line_item	write	guarded: dry_run + confirm before writing
set_item_price_cents / set_item_stock_quantity	write	optimistic-lock pre-check, bounds, dry_run

Every tool carries MCP behaviour annotations (readOnlyHint / destructiveHint / idempotentHint) so clients can parallelize reads and prompt before writes.

Install

uvx clover-mcp   # coming soon after PyPI publish

Or from source:

git clone https://github.com/SBolivarLoL/clover-mcp-server
cd clover-mcp-server
uv pip install -e .

Configuration

Copy .env.example to .env and fill in your values:

cp .env.example .env

Required:

Variable	Description
CLOVER_MERCHANT_ID	Your Clover merchant ID
CLOVER_ACCESS_TOKEN	Your Clover API access token

Optional:

Variable	Default	Description
CLOVER_REGION	na	na, eu, or la
CLOVER_SANDBOX	false	true to use the Clover sandbox
CLOVER_AUTH_MODE	token	token or oauth_refresh

Auth modes

• token — paste a static access token. Works for sandbox and single-merchant production use. If the token expires, regenerate it in the Clover Developer Dashboard.
• oauth_refresh — the server auto-refreshes on expiry and persists the new token pair to CLOVER_TOKEN_STORE (default: ~/.config/clover-mcp/tokens.json, mode 0600). Clover refresh tokens are single-use, so the rotated pair is written back after each refresh. Run scripts/get_sandbox_token.py to obtain tokens — it writes them straight to the store, so you only set CLOVER_AUTH_MODE, CLOVER_OAUTH_CLIENT_ID, CLOVER_OAUTH_CLIENT_SECRET, and CLOVER_MERCHANT_ID in .env (no token values needed). Pasting CLOVER_ACCESS_TOKEN / CLOVER_REFRESH_TOKEN into .env still works as an alternative.

Use a least-privilege token. Grant only the permission scopes the tools you actually use require (see the table below). A read-only deployment needs no *_W scopes at all. Don't reuse a production token in sandbox or vice versa.

Claude Desktop setup

Add to ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "clover": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["clover-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "CLOVER_MERCHANT_ID": "your_merchant_id",
        "CLOVER_ACCESS_TOKEN": "your_token",
        "CLOVER_REGION": "na"
      }
    }
  }
}

Cursor setup

Add to .cursor/mcp.json in your project (or ~/.cursor/mcp.json globally):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "clover": {
      "command": "uvx",
      "args": ["clover-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "CLOVER_MERCHANT_ID": "your_merchant_id",
        "CLOVER_ACCESS_TOKEN": "your_token"
      }
    }
  }
}

Required Clover permissions

Your token must have the following Clover permission scopes:

Permission	Used by
MERCHANT_R	get_merchant_info
ORDERS_R	list_orders, get_order, list_open_orders
PAYMENTS_R	list_payments, get_sales_summary (payments + refunds)
ORDERS_R	…also get_top_items
INVENTORY_R	list_items, get_item, list_low_stock_items, list_categories, list_modifiers, list_taxes, list_discounts
INVENTORY_W	set_item_price_cents, set_item_stock_quantity
CUSTOMERS_R	search_customers, get_customer
CUSTOMERS_W	create_customer
EMPLOYEES_R	list_employees, get_employee, list_shifts, list_active_shifts (optional)
MERCHANT_R	…also list_devices, list_tenders, list_order_types, list_opening_hours, list_cash_events, list_tip_suggestions, get_default_service_charge

Read scopes (*_R) are probed at startup; the server warns about any missing ones (it no longer exits — a hosted server must still start) and the affected tools return a 403 when called. EMPLOYEES_R is optional. Write scopes (*_W) are not probed (a probe would mutate data) — a missing write scope surfaces as a 403 the first time you call that tool. Permission changes on a Clover app require the merchant to reinstall the app.

Remote / hosted (v2)

By default this runs locally over stdio for a single merchant. To run it remotely:

• FastMCP Cloud / Horizon (easiest): deploy with entrypoint server.py:mcp, enable the platform's built-in auth, and set single-merchant Clover env vars. The platform handles OAuth, HTTPS, and transport — no IdP setup, and do not set CLOVER_TRANSPORT/CLOVER_AUTH_* (that path needs an IdP and will fail).
• Self-host: use server.py:create_server, which makes clover-mcp an OAuth 2.1 resource server (validates your IdP's JWTs, publishes Protected Resource Metadata per RFC 9728, routes by token claim) and refuses to start without an IdP so it can't run open.

Full setup for both in docs/DEPLOY.md. How SSO/SAML, SCIM, audit, and multi-tenant authorization fit: docs/enterprise-identity.md.

Sales summary semantics

get_sales_summary makes the accounting explicit so the LLM can explain it:

• Gross = sum of result=SUCCESS payment amounts. FAIL/AUTH/uncaptured PRE_AUTH are excluded.
• Refunds come from the dedicated /refunds endpoint (Clover refunds are separate objects with a positive amount, not negative payments). Voids are counted from voided payments. Both are reported separately (refund_count/refund_amount, void_count) — never netted into payment_count. net_sales = gross_sales - refund_amount.
• Tips and taxes are broken out as their own line items.
• Service charges are not reported separately: Clover exposes them on the order only as a percentage (no computed amount), and what customers actually paid is already in gross_sales via payment totals.
• Offline payments are included; a note flags the window when any are present.
• Currency comes from the merchant record, never defaulted.
• Windows longer than 90 days are split and concatenated transparently.

Development

uv pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest
ruff check src/
mypy src/clover_mcp/

Correctness eval + latency/load benchmark against a sandbox: uv run python scripts/benchmark.py — methodology, results, and failure analysis in docs/eval.md.

Architecture (diagrams + module map): docs/ARCHITECTURE.md. Run a 5-minute demo: uv run python scripts/demo.py (or the runbook in docs/DEMO.md).

Observability

All observability output goes to stderr (stdout carries the MCP stdio protocol).

• Audit logging (on by default) — every write emits one structured JSON line: {"audit":"write","method":"PUT","path":"/items/…","status":200,"merchant":"…"}. No request bodies or secrets. Disable with CLOVER_AUDIT_LOG=false.

• Latency logging — set CLOVER_LATENCY_LOG=true to emit a latency_ms line per Clover HTTP call.

• Distributed tracing (optional) — install the OpenTelemetry extra and point it at your collector; every Clover call becomes a span. Without it, tracing is a zero-cost no-op (no dependency added):

  uv pip install -e ".[otel]"
  export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=http://localhost:4317
  export OTEL_SERVICE_NAME=clover-mcp
  

Security

See SECURITY.md for the vulnerability disclosure policy.

Legal & disclaimer

This is not legal advice. The notes below describe the project's intent and the operator's responsibilities.

• Not affiliated. This is an independent, community project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Clover Network, LLC or Fiserv, Inc. "Clover" and related marks are trademarks of their respective owners and are used here only nominatively — to state that this software interoperates with the Clover REST API. No Clover logos or branding are used.
• No warranty / no liability. The software is provided "AS IS" under the MIT License, without warranty of any kind. The authors are not liable for any claim, damage, or loss arising from its use — including incorrect data, unintended writes, downtime, or API changes outside the authors' control.
• You operate it; you're responsible. You run this server with your own Clover account and API credentials. You are solely responsible for: complying with Clover's developer/API terms and trademark-usage policy; safeguarding your tokens; and meeting any data-protection (e.g. GDPR/CCPA) and tax obligations for data you access. The write tools modify live merchant data — test in the sandbox first and use least-privilege tokens.
• No card data, no payments. The server never handles payment card data (the shaping layer blocks it) and deliberately cannot capture payments, refund, or void. It is not a PCI-DSS solution.
• Third-party API. This project only calls Clover's public REST API using the operator's credentials; it bundles no Clover SDK or proprietary code. Clover may change or restrict its API at any time, which may break functionality.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.