MDB Case Assistant — Project Pitch

Version 1.0.178 · Manifest V3 Chrome extension · No build step required

Executive Summary (leadership)

MDB Case Assistant is a Chrome browser extension built for MongoDB Technical Account Managers and Support Engineers. When a support engineer opens an active case on the Customer Hub or Support Portal, the extension automatically reads the case details from the page, pulls in enriched data from internal APIs where available, and presents a compact triage panel — without requiring the engineer to open a separate tool, log in again, or copy-paste between windows.

The extension generates AI-assisted case analysis through Glean, surfacing an executive summary, timeline, key people, blockers, and suggested next steps in a single view. When Glean is not available, engineers can still copy a structured case prompt and run it manually. It also tracks accounts and cases across sessions, flags ownerless cases for quick acknowledgment, and surfaces relevant Knowledge Base articles and diagnostic tools alongside live case context.

Beyond single-case triage, the extension now also helps teams prepare for and respond to incidents. A Firedrill mode runs scripted incident scenarios — with a simulated customer persona, a live readiness scorecard, and enforced drill-safety guards — entirely inside the same tracker UI used for real cases, so incident-response teams can rehearse the joint playbook before a real S1. An S1 Swarm workflow fans analysis agents out the moment a new S1 is detected on a Tier-0 account and assembles review-ready Slack drafts, action items, and an escalation path for a human to approve.

The business value is faster, more consistent case triage and incident readiness: engineers spend less time switching between systems and hunting for context, and more time acting on the right next step. Because the extension runs inside the engineer’s authenticated Chrome session, there is no separate login, no new backend to manage, and no change to existing Hub or Support workflows. As of the 2026-05-28 security review, the extension ships in manual mode by default — backend calls fire only on an explicit operator action, not on background timers — so it does no unattended polling of internal systems.

Key Features (all)

• Live case context extraction — automatically reads case number, severity, status, owner, timestamps, visible errors, and timeline hints from the case page DOM.
• Hub / TS Tools API enrichment — fetches comments, case stage, next action, and account activity rows using the engineer’s existing browser session (cookie-first, bearer-token fallback).
• Glean-first AI analysis — generates a tracker-style analysis with executive summary, timeline, blockers, people, and solution fields via the configured Glean endpoint.
• Multi-mode Glean authentication — OAuth PKCE through chrome.identity, browser-session probing, or a legacy API token, resolved in that order.
• Manual prompt fallback — when Glean is unavailable, produces a structured JSON prompt ready to copy into any LLM.
• Firedrill mode — runs scripted incident-response drills against a fully simulated case: scenario picker, a customer-persona reply generator, injected complications, a live IR readiness scorecard, and enforced drill-safety guards ([DRILL] discipline, real-incident abort). No real customer case, Salesforce, or Jira record is written.
• S1 Swarm automation — on detecting a new or upgraded S1 on a configured Tier-0 account, runs analysis agents (case analysis, playbook match, diagnostic tools, KB search, Glean research, blocker detection) and assembles Slack drafts, prioritized action items, and an escalation path. All Slack output is a draft for human review — never auto-sent.
• Tracked accounts and tracked cases — dashboard for managing accounts and cases across sessions, with on-demand refresh and badge metrics.
• Ownerless-case alert flow — surfaces unowned cases for quick acknowledgment or escalation through a dedicated alert popup.
• In-repo KB and diagnostic tool index — static Knowledge Base search and diagnostic tool registry shipped with the extension, available offline from external services.
• HELP / Jira enrichment — detects referenced Jira HELP ticket IDs in case metadata and enriches them from jira.mongodb.org.
• Shadow DOM overlay — injects an isolated triage panel directly on the case page without CSS interference from the host page.
• Optional local MCP server — exposes 42 case tools over stdio (status/auth, case context and details, account, search, HELP/Jira, tracking, analysis/evidence, diagnostics, an operations registry, and the full Firedrill surface) so AI assistants (Claude Code, Cursor, Copilot) can drive the extension directly.
• Operations registry — a self-describing catalog of 61 CLI operations runnable through the MCP mdb_case_op_* tools, with per-operation history.
• Development helper relay — localhost autoreload server and CLI helper for fast iteration without a build pipeline.

Problems Solved (leadership + team)

Scope (leadership + reviewers)

Security Posture (reviewers + leadership)

Trust model

The extension trusts the authenticated Chrome profile and any active browser session established with the declared host origins. There is no extension-specific login system for Hub, Jira, or TS Tools — that access flows through the engineer’s existing browser session. The one exception is Glean, which additionally supports OAuth PKCE through chrome.identity (and a legacy API token) alongside browser-session probing.

Manual mode (default)

Following the 2026-05-28 security review, backend access is gated to manual mode: backend calls fire only on an explicit operator action, never on background timers. Auto-refresh and batch fan-out are off by default, and the S1 Swarm runs serialized (one request at a time) rather than as a parallel burst. The policy is enforced by src/background/backend-gate.js and surfaced as a locked control on the options page.

Loopback-only binding

The development helper relay binds exclusively to 127.0.0.1:17324. It is never reachable from a remote host and is gated as a local development tool with no shipped runtime dependency. The local MCP server communicates with the relay over stdio, not over a network socket.

Origin allowlist

manifest.json declares explicit host_permissions for every external surface the extension contacts. There is no <all_urls> permission. The full allowlist is:

https://support.mongodb.com/*
https://hub.corp.mongodb.com/*
https://support-api.ts-tools.prod.corp.mongodb.com/*
https://jira.mongodb.org/*
https://*.glean.com/*
https://*.internal.mongodb.com/*

The development relay origin http://127.0.0.1/* is not in host_permissions; it is declared under optional_host_permissions so it is never auto-granted in a production build — an operator must opt in at runtime via chrome.permissions.request. The permissions list is storage, cookies, scripting, tabs, alarms, notifications, and identity (the last for Glean OAuth).

Content Security Policy

manifest.json pins an explicit content_security_policy.extension_pages: script-src 'self' (no inline scripts, no eval), a connect-src allowlist matching the host allowlist above, object-src 'none', base-uri 'self', and frame-ancestors restricted to the supported Hub / Support / internal pages plus self.

No auth on /mcp

The local MCP server uses stdio transport only. There is no loopback HTTP MCP endpoint, so there is no network socket for unauthorized local processes to probe. The relay token in the dev relay state file is the only local credential; any process that can read it and reach the relay can act through the extension session, so the MCP server is documented as a local developer/operator tool.

What to audit before changing transport

Before adding an HTTP MCP transport or exposing the relay on a network interface, audit:

1. mcp-server/src/relay-client.ts — relay token handling and relay command serialization
2. scripts/dev-relay-state.mjs — relay token file path and state file format
3. docs/SECURITY.md §6 and §7 — network trust boundaries and accepted residual risks
4. manifest.json host_permissions — confirm no over-broad permissions are introduced
5. src/background/logger.js — confirm credential-field redaction covers any new secret keys

Additional security controls:

• src/background/logger.js redacts token/cookie/password-style keys before log emission.
• src/content/case-overlay.js mounts the panel in a shadow root inside an extension iframe to block host-page CSS interference.
• src/panel/panel.js uses escapeHtml() before inserting any DOM-derived or API-derived content into generated HTML.
• buildCaseAnalysisPrompt() in src/background/llm-client.js uses a JSON-only contract to constrain prompt shape, reducing (but not eliminating) prompt-injection risk from case text.

Architecture Overview (reviewers + team)

System context

The following diagram is reproduced verbatim from docs/ARCHITECTURE.md §3.1:

Support engineer in Chrome
        |
        v
MDB Case Assistant extension
        |
        +--> Supported case pages
        |     - https://support.mongodb.com/*
        |     - https://hub.corp.mongodb.com/*
        |     - https://*.internal.mongodb.com/*
        |
        +--> TS Tools / support APIs
        |     - cookie-backed or bearer-token fallback access
        |
        +--> Glean endpoint
        |     - default: https://mongodb-be.glean.com/mcp/default
        |
        +--> Static repo-shipped registries
              - KB index
              - diagnostic tool registry
              - related tools index

Runtime containers

Key runtime flow: case ingestion → analysis

1. hub-extractor.js scrapes the case page and sends MCA_UPSERT_CASE_CONTEXT.
2. service-worker.js merges DOM context with TS Tools API enrichment and writes to chrome.storage.session.
3. The panel sends MCA_ANALYZE_CASE; llm-client.js picks Glean or the manual prompt fallback.
4. case-tracker-analysis.js builds a tracker-style evidence snapshot, calls Glean, and normalizes the response into executive summary / timeline / people / blockers / solution.
5. The panel and dashboard render the normalized tracker analysis.

State ownership

• Durable settings, tracking state, and vault envelope → chrome.storage.local under mca_options_v1
• Disposable case and session cache → chrome.storage.session under mca_session_state_v1
• Worker restarts are handled transparently through session cache rebuild and alarm-driven pruning

Installation & Quick Start (new users)

Prerequisites

• Node.js 20 or later (required for the local test harness and MCP server)
• Google Chrome with Developer mode enabled
• Active browser sessions for support.mongodb.com / hub.corp.mongodb.com and, if using Glean, the configured Glean tenant

Install steps

# 1. Clone the repository
git clone <repo-url>
cd mdb-case-assistant

# 2. Install the local harness and MCP server dependencies
npm install

# 3. Install Chromium for Playwright smoke tests (optional but recommended)
npx playwright install chromium

Load the unpacked extension in Chrome:

1. Open chrome://extensions in Chrome.
2. Enable Developer mode (toggle in the top-right corner).
3. Click Load unpacked.
4. Select the repository root directory.
5. Confirm MDB Case Assistant appears in the extensions list.