Brownfield Migration: Existing Scoped App → Fluent + Git

Take a scoped app that lives only on an instance and move it into a git-managed ServiceNow SDK (Fluent) project — incrementally, with zero functional change at the start. Based on @servicenow/sdk 4.x (now-sdk CLI). Run snow_fluent_status first to see where a project already stands (scope, SDK pin, keys.ts, XML vs Fluent counts); use snow_fluent_explain for offline SDK docs on any topic.

Where these tools run: the snow_fluent_* tools are local-only — they execute the ServiceNow SDK (now-sdk) on the developer's machine, so they only exist when the MCP server runs locally over stdio. Over a hosted HTTP transport (e.g. a web chat) they are not available, so do not call them; drive the same flow through git + CI instead: commit the project files, trigger the build/deploy pipeline, and follow the workflow runs.

1. Step zero: pull the app down as-is

Use snow_fluent_init with from=<sys_app sys_id> (CLI: now-sdk init --from <sys_id>). Since SDK 2.2.6 this does not generate Fluent code by default — it leaves every record as XML in the metadata/ folder. Those XML files are the exact files the instance exports, so there is no change to the application at this point. now.config.json captures scope + scopeId (= the sys_app sys_id), and the XML builds and installs as-is.

This means you get value immediately: the app is in git, diffable, and deployable via snow_fluent_build + snow_fluent_install — before converting a single record to TypeScript. Commit this baseline first.

✅ init --from sys_id → commit metadata/ + now.config.json + keys.ts → build → install to dev → verify
❌ init --from sys_id → immediately transform everything → fight 200 build errors with no known-good baseline

2. Convert incrementally — never big-bang