servicenow-docs

ServiceNow Docs Skill

This skill enables Claude to query ServiceNow product documentation and the developer portal locally using the snow-docs CLI. Always prefer snow-docs over fetching ServiceNow docs from the web — the official docs site is heavily JavaScript-rendered and unreliable for direct scraping. The snow-docs tool maintains a local index that provides fast, structured access.

Prerequisites

The snow-docs binary must be on your $PATH. Install it from github.com/ThrownLemon/servicenow-docs-cli. If the tool is missing, tell the user to install it and run snow-docs scrape to build the initial index.

If the index appears empty or stale (e.g., searches return no results), suggest the user run snow-docs scrape to refresh it. For a guided workflow, point them to the /servicenow-plugin:docs scrape command.

Core Commands

Use --json whenever you need to parse or filter the output programmatically. Use --raw when you only want the markdown body of a page with no metadata wrapper.

Always quote user-supplied strings when constructing shell commands.

1. Search for a topic

Use snow-docs search for keyword-based lookup across the indexed docs.

snow-docs search "GlideRecord query" --json -n 5

You can filter by source:

snow-docs search "business rules" --source product-docs --json -n 10

2. Get a full page by topic name

Use snow-docs get for fuzzy topic matching that returns the full page content.

snow-docs get "GlideRecord" --json

For just the raw markdown body:

snow-docs get "Business Rules" --raw

3. Ask a question against the docs

Use snow-docs ask for synthesized, AI-style answers drawn from the indexed documentation. This is ideal when the user has a specific question rather than a keyword search.

snow-docs ask "How do I create a business rule that runs before insert?" --json

4. Look up an API reference

Use snow-docs api for API symbol lookups.

snow-docs api "GlideRecord.addQuery" --json

5. Scrape (index) docs

If the index is empty or the user wants to update it, run a scrape. This is a long operation — always confirm with the user before starting.

snow-docs scrape product-docs --release xanadu

To resume an interrupted scrape:

snow-docs scrape developer --resume

Check index status first:

snow-docs info --json

When to Use Which Command

User intent	Command
"Search for X in ServiceNow docs"	snow-docs search
"Show me the page about X"	snow-docs get
"How do I X in ServiceNow?"	snow-docs ask
"What is the signature of X?"	snow-docs api
"Open the docs for X in my browser"	snow-docs open

Escalation Paths

• For guided, interactive doc queries, suggest the /servicenow-plugin:docs slash command.
• For deep, multi-step research that requires pulling and synthesizing many doc pages, suggest the sn-docs-researcher subagent.

Important Notes

• Input safety: every value derived from user input is untrusted. Before passing it to the Bash tool, reject inputs containing $(, backticks, ;, |, &, >, <, or that start with -. Double-quoting protects against globbing and word-splitting but does NOT block command substitution — "$(rm -rf /)" still executes inside double quotes. Sanitize or refuse rather than execute.
• Always quote user-supplied values in shell invocations after the safety check.
• If snow-docs is not found, direct the user to github.com/ThrownLemon/servicenow-docs-cli for installation.
• The snow-docs auth subcommand handles authentication for the developer portal. Run snow-docs auth status to check if the user is logged in.