GitHub MCP Server

The GitHub MCP Server is a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that provides seamless integration with GitHub APIs, enabling advanced automation and interaction capabilities for developers and tools.

Use Cases

Automating GitHub workflows and processes.
Extracting and analyzing data from GitHub repositories.
Building AI powered tools and applications that interact with GitHub's ecosystem.

Prerequisites

Create a GitHub Personal Access Token. The MCP server can use many of the GitHub APIs, so enable the permissions that you feel comfortable granting your AI tools.

To learn more about access tokens, please check out the documentation.

To run the server in a container, you will need to have Docker installed.

Installation

Usage with VS Code

Install the GitHub MCP server into VS Code by clicking here:

Or run this command in your terminal:

code --add-mcp '{"name":"github","command":"docker","args":["run", "-i", "--rm", "-e", "GITHUB_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN", "ghcr.io/github/github-mcp-server:main"], "env": {"GITHUB_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN": "${input:github-pat}"}, "inputs": [{ "id": "github-pat", "type": "promptString", "description": "Github Personal Access Token", "password": true}]}'

VS Code is now configured and will prompt for your token the first time you use agent mode.

Usage with Claude Desktop

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "github": {
      "command": "docker",
      "args": [
        "run",
        "-i",
        "--rm",
        "-e",
        "GITHUB_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN",
        "ghcr.io/github/github-mcp-server:main"
      ],
      "env": {
        "GITHUB_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN": "<YOUR_TOKEN>"
      }
    }
  }
}

Build from source

If you don't have Docker, you can use go to build the binary in the cmd/github-mcp-server directory, and use the github-mcp-server stdio command with the GITHUB_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN environment variable set to your token.

GitHub Enterprise Server

The flag --gh-host and the environment variable GH_HOST can be used to set the GitHub Enterprise Server hostname.

i18n / Overriding Descriptions

The descriptions of the tools can be overridden by creating a github-mcp-server-config.json file in the same directory as the binary.

The file should contain a JSON object with the tool names as keys and the new descriptions as values. For example:

{
  "TOOL_ADD_ISSUE_COMMENT_DESCRIPTION": "an alternative description",
  "TOOL_CREATE_BRANCH_DESCRIPTION": "Create a new branch in a GitHub repository"
}

You can create an export of the current translations by running the binary with the --export-translations flag.

This flag will preserve any translations/overrides you have made, while adding any new translations that have been added to the binary since the last time you exported.

./github-mcp-server --export-translations
cat github-mcp-server-config.json

You can also use ENV vars to override the descriptions. The environment variable names are the same as the keys in the JSON file, prefixed with GITHUB_MCP_ and all uppercase.

For example, to override the TOOL_ADD_ISSUE_COMMENT_DESCRIPTION tool, you can set the following environment variable:

export GITHUB_MCP_TOOL_ADD_ISSUE_COMMENT_DESCRIPTION="an alternative description"

Tools

Users

get_me - Get details of the authenticated user
- No parameters required

Issues

get_issue - Gets the contents of an issue within a repository
- owner: Repository owner (string, required)
- repo: Repository name (string, required)
- issue_number: Issue number (number, required)
create_issue - Create a new issue in a GitHub repository
- owner: Repository owner (string, required)
- repo: Repository name (string, required)
- title: Issue title (string, required)
- body: Issue body content (string, optional)
- assignees: Comma-separated list of usernames to assign to this issue (string, optional)
- labels: Comma-separated list of labels to apply to this issue (string, optional)
add_issue_comment - Add a comment to an issue
- owner: Repository owner (string, required)
- repo: Repository name (string, required)
- issue_number: Issue number (number, required)
- body: Comment text (string, required)
list_issues - List and filter repository issues
- owner: Repository owner (string, required)
- repo: Repository name (string, required)
- state: Filter by state ('open', 'closed', 'all') (string, optional)
- labels: Comma-separated list of labels to filter by (string, optional)
- sort: Sort by ('created', 'updated', 'comments') (string, optional)
- direction: Sort direction ('asc', 'desc') (string, optional)
- since: Filter by date (ISO 8601 timestamp) (string, optional)
- page: Page number (number, optional)
- per_page: Results per page (number, optional)
update_issue - Update an existing issue in a GitHub repository
- owner: Repository owner (string, required)
- repo: Repository name (string, required)
- issue_number: Issue number to update (number, required)
- title: New title (string, optional)
- body: New description (string, optional)
- state: New state ('open' or 'closed') (string, optional)
- labels: Comma-separated list of new labels (string, optional)
- assignees: Comma-separated list of new assignees (string, optional)
- milestone: New milestone number (number, optional)
search_issues - Search for issues and pull requests
- query: Search query (string, required)
- sort: Sort field (string, optional)
- order: Sort order (string, optional)
- page: Page number (number, optional)
- per_page: Results per page (number, optional)

Pull Requests

get_pull_request - Get details of a specific pull request
- owner: Repository owner (string, required)
- repo: Repository name (string, required)
- pull_number: Pull request number (number, required)
list_pull_requests - List and filter repository pull requests
- owner: Repository owner (string, required)
- repo: Repository name (string, required)
- state: PR state (string, optional)
- sort: Sort field (string, optional)
- direction: Sort direction (string, optional)
- per_page: Results per page (number, optional)
- page: Page number (number, optional)
merge_pull_request - Merge a pull request
- owner: Repository owner (string, required)
- repo: Repository name (string, required)
- pull_number: Pull request number (number, required)
- commit_title: Title for the merge commit (string, optional)
- commit_message: Message for the merge commit (string, optional)
- merge_method: Merge method (string, optional)
get_pull_request_files - Get the list of files changed in a pull request
- owner: Repository owner (string, required)
- repo: Repository name (string, required)
- pull_number: Pull request number (number, required)
get_pull_request_status - Get the combined status of all status checks for a pull request
- owner: Repository owner (string, required)
- repo: Repository name (string, required)
- pull_number: Pull request number (number, required)
update_pull_request_branch - Update a pull request branch with the latest changes from the base branch
- owner: Repository owner (string, required)
- repo: Repository name (string, required)
- pull_number: Pull request number (number, required)
- expected_head_sha: The expected SHA of the pull request's HEAD ref (string, optional)
get_pull_request_comments - Get the review comments on a pull request
- owner: Repository owner (string, required)
- repo: Repository name (string, required)
- pull_number: Pull request number (number, required)
get_pull_request_reviews - Get the reviews on a pull request
- owner: Repository owner (string, required)
- repo: Repository name (string, required)
- pull_number: Pull request number (number, required)
create_pull_request_review - Create a review on a pull request review
- owner: Repository owner (string, required)
- repo: Repository name (string, required)
- pull_number: Pull request number (number, required)
- body: Review comment text (string, optional)
- event: Review action ('APPROVE', 'REQUEST_CHANGES', 'COMMENT') (string, required)
- commit_id: SHA of commit to review (string, optional)
- comments: Line-specific comments array of objects, each object with path (string), position (number), and body (string) (array, optional)

Repositories

create_or_update_file - Create or update a single file in a repository
- owner: Repository owner (string, required)
- repo: Repository name (string, required)
- path: File path (string, required)
- message: Commit message (string, required)
- content: File content (string, required)
- branch: Branch name (string, optional)
- sha: File SHA if updating (string, optional)
push_files - Push multiple files in a single commit
- owner: Repository owner (string, required)
- repo: Repository name (string, required)
- branch: Branch to push to (string, required)
- files: Files to push, each with path and content (array, required)
- message: Commit message (string, required)
search_repositories - Search for GitHub repositories
- query: Search query (string, required)
- sort: Sort field (string, optional)
- order: Sort order (string, optional)
- page: Page number (number, optional)
- per_page: Results per page (number, optional)
create_repository - Create a new GitHub repository
- name: Repository name (string, required)
- description: Repository description (string, optional)
- private: Whether the repository is private (boolean, optional)
- auto_init: Auto-initialize with README (boolean, optional)
- gitignore_template: Gitignore template name (string, optional)
get_file_contents - Get contents of a file or directory
- owner: Repository owner (string, required)
- repo: Repository name (string, required)
- path: File path (string, required)
- ref: Git reference (string, optional)
fork_repository - Fork a repository
- owner: Repository owner (string, required)
- repo: Repository name (string, required)
- organization: Target organization name (string, optional)
create_branch - Create a new branch
- owner: Repository owner (string, required)
- repo: Repository name (string, required)
- branch: New branch name (string, required)
- sha: SHA to create branch from (string, required)
list_commits - Gets commits of a branch in a repository
- owner: Repository owner (string, required)
- repo: Repository name (string, required)
- sha: Branch name, tag, or commit SHA (string, optional)
- path: Only commits containing this file path (string, optional)
- page: Page number (number, optional)
- per_page: Results per page (number, optional)

Search

search_code - Search for code across GitHub repositories
- query: Search query (string, required)
- sort: Sort field (string, optional)
- order: Sort order (string, optional)
- page: Page number (number, optional)
- per_page: Results per page (number, optional)
search_users - Search for GitHub users
- query: Search query (string, required)
- sort: Sort field (string, optional)
- order: Sort order (string, optional)
- page: Page number (number, optional)
- per_page: Results per page (number, optional)

Code Scanning

get_code_scanning_alert - Get a code scanning alert
- owner: Repository owner (string, required)
- repo: Repository name (string, required)
- alert_number: Alert number (number, required)
list_code_scanning_alerts - List code scanning alerts for a repository
- owner: Repository owner (string, required)
- repo: Repository name (string, required)
- ref: Git reference (string, optional)
- state: Alert state (string, optional)
- severity: Alert severity (string, optional)

Resources

Repository Content

Get Repository Content Retrieves the content of a repository at a specific path.
- Template: repo://{owner}/{repo}/contents{/path*}
- Parameters:
  - owner: Repository owner (string, required)
  - repo: Repository name (string, required)
  - path: File or directory path (string, optional)
Get Repository Content for a Specific Branch Retrieves the content of a repository at a specific path for a given branch.
- Template: repo://{owner}/{repo}/refs/heads/{branch}/contents{/path*}
- Parameters:
  - owner: Repository owner (string, required)
  - repo: Repository name (string, required)
  - branch: Branch name (string, required)
  - path: File or directory path (string, optional)
Get Repository Content for a Specific Commit Retrieves the content of a repository at a specific path for a given commit.
- Template: repo://{owner}/{repo}/sha/{sha}/contents{/path*}
- Parameters:
  - owner: Repository owner (string, required)
  - repo: Repository name (string, required)
  - sha: Commit SHA (string, required)
  - path: File or directory path (string, optional)
Get Repository Content for a Specific Tag Retrieves the content of a repository at a specific path for a given tag.
- Template: repo://{owner}/{repo}/refs/tags/{tag}/contents{/path*}
- Parameters:
  - owner: Repository owner (string, required)
  - repo: Repository name (string, required)
  - tag: Tag name (string, required)
  - path: File or directory path (string, optional)
Get Repository Content for a Specific Pull Request Retrieves the content of a repository at a specific path for a given pull request.
- Template: repo://{owner}/{repo}/refs/pull/{pr_number}/head/contents{/path*}
- Parameters:
  - owner: Repository owner (string, required)
  - repo: Repository name (string, required)
  - pr_number: Pull request number (string, required)
  - path: File or directory path (string, optional)

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