GitHub MCP Server

What is GitHub MCP Server?

GitHub MCP Server is the official Model Context Protocol server maintained by GitHub. It acts as a secure, local bridge between AI assistants (such as Claude, Cursor, or Copilot) and the GitHub API, allowing AI agents to interact with repositories, issues, pull requests, users, and more — without exposing credentials to the model.

The server is open-source under the MIT license and has been fully migrated to the official MCP Go SDK, ensuring it stays in sync with the latest MCP specification updates.

What can AI agents do with it?

• Read and write files, create branches, open and review pull requests
• Create, update, and close issues with labels and assignees
• Manage GitHub Actions workflows and check run statuses
• Search repositories, users, and code
• Access releases, tags, and commit history
• Work with GitHub Projects (V2) and project items

Enterprise-grade security features

• Lockdown mode — restricts content from untrusted contributors in public repositories, protecting workflows from prompt injection via user-generated content
• Content sanitization — enabled by default; removes invisible Unicode characters, hidden HTML attributes, and invisible markdown fragments from issues, PRs, and comments
• PAT scope filtering — tools are automatically filtered based on what your personal access token actually has permission to do
• OAuth scope metadata — every tool declares which OAuth scopes it requires

Fine-grained tool control

Instead of loading all toolsets at once (which can expose 27+ tools and bloat the context window), GitHub MCP Server now supports tool-specific configuration via the X-MCP-Tools header. Loading only 3–10 of the most relevant tools can reduce context window usage by 60–90%, leading to faster responses and lower inference costs.

Integration

Works out of the box with VS Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, Cline, Windsurf, and any MCP-compatible client. Supports both local stdio and remote Streamable HTTP modes. An “Insiders Mode” is available for early access to experimental features like MCP Apps.