Adobe details local AEM development with coding agents

Adobe’s approach to AI-assisted local development for AEM as a Cloud Service combines project context, reusable agent skills and MCP servers. The setup targets Java-stack development, helping tools such as Claude Code, Cursor and GitHub Copilot apply AEM-specific practices rather than rely solely on general technical knowledge.

A project-root AGENTS.md file grounds coding sessions in the application’s structure. Adobe’s ensure-agents-md skill generates it from project configuration, but developers must update it manually when the structure changes. Other skills support component creation, Dispatcher configuration, workflow development, migration and code assessment. Migration and assessment workflows can report findings before making changes, then apply targeted fixes for developer review. The code-assessment skill does not commit or push changes.

Local MCP servers provide runtime evidence for diagnosis and validation. The AEM Quickstart server exposes logs, OSGi diagnostics and request-processing traces. The Dispatcher server, bundled with the Dispatcher SDK, supports configuration validation, request tracing, cache inspection and runtime monitoring against a local Docker instance. Adobe cautions that the default Quickstart credentials shown in its setup instructions must not be used in non-local environments.