Manage issues, PRs, and repos straight from chat.

What it is

GitHub's official MCP server. Claude can read and open issues, review and merge PRs, trigger Actions, search across repos — all from chat. Nice complement to the gh CLI Claude already uses.

Install / Setup

You'll need a GitHub personal access token (github.com/settings/tokens).

Option 1 — Terminal (HTTP, Claude Code 2.1.1+):

claude mcp add-json github '{"type":"http","url":"https://api.githubcopilot.com/mcp","headers":{"Authorization":"Bearer YOUR_GITHUB_PAT"}}'

Option 2 — Prompt Claude Code:

Install the official GitHub MCP server (github/github-mcp-server) via claude mcp add-json with HTTP transport on https://api.githubcopilot.com/mcp. Ask me for my GitHub personal access token and verify with /mcp that it's connected after.

Use cases

• Issue triage — "Give me every open bug labeled 'critical' and rank them by last comment."
• Automated PR review — Claude reads the diff + discussion and hands you the key points as a summary.
• Release notes — Claude pulls every merged PR since the last tag and assembles the changelog.
• Debug failing Actions — Broken CI run: Claude pulls the logs and points to the exact line that blew up.
• Cross-repo recon — "Where are we still using the old API version across all repos?" — Claude searches the whole org.

Pro tip

For private repos: give the token only the scopes you actually need (repo, workflow). Full admin rights are a security time bomb the day an agent goes off the rails and force-pushes a branch.

🚀 Anyone can install MCPs. Knowing which combo actually moves the needle for your workflow — that's what saves you weeks. Inside the community I walk you through my full MCP setup. → Join the Claude Code Mastery Community

Updated regularly — follow @vine.codes for more.