GitHub Issue Triage MCP Server

Give Claude, Cursor or any MCP client a maintainer's view of a GitHub repo: which issues to triage next and why, who is still waiting for a first reply, what's unlabeled, unassigned or stale, which issues look like duplicates, and which of your repo's own labels fit an issue. Read-only by default. Python standard library only: no pip install, no Docker.

The two write tools don't exist unless you start the server with --allow-write (or GH_TRIAGE_ALLOW_WRITE=1), so a read-only setup can't label or comment even if asked to.

Works without a token on public repos (GitHub allows 60 requests an hour). For private repos or more requests (5,000/hour), create a fine-grained personal access token with access to the repos you want and the repository permission Issues: Read-only (or Read and write if you enable the write tools), and set it as GITHUB_TOKEN. The token is only sent to api.github.com (or GITHUB_API_URL for GitHub Enterprise Server, e.g. https://github.example.com/api/v3).

Claude Code

claude mcp add github-triage --env GITHUB_TOKEN=github_pat_... -- python3 /absolute/path/to/github-issue-triage-mcp/server.py --repo your-org/your-repo

Or install the folder as a Claude Code plugin (.claude-plugin/plugin.json, .mcp.json passing GITHUB_TOKEN and GH_TRIAGE_REPOS from your environment, and a triage skill in skills/github-issue-triage/).

Cursor: copy examples/configs/cursor-mcp.json into .cursor/mcp.json or ~/.cursor/mcp.json. Claude Desktop: merge examples/configs/claude_desktop_config.json.

Options: --repo owner/name (repeatable) or GH_TRIAGE_REPOS=a/b,c/d limits which repos the tools may touch; --allow-write turns on the two write tools.

Then ask: "Triage report for your-org/your-repo: what should I look at first?", "Is there already an issue like this: export crashes on emoji?", "Suggest labels for #412 and #415".

Speaks MCP 2026-07-28 (stateless: server/discover, per-request _meta version) and the handshake versions 2025-11-25, 2025-06-18, 2025-03-26 and 2024-11-05 on the same stdio process, so current and older clients both connect. Uses GitHub REST API version 2026-03-10 with Link-header pagination and a 2-minute in-memory cache.

• Issue titles, bodies and comments are written by strangers. Every result carries a note telling the model to treat them as data, never instructions; the skill repeats it. (The demo data includes an issue that tries a prompt injection.)
• Read-only by default; write tools only with --allow-write, and the skill tells the agent to show you the exact labels or comment text and wait for a yes.
• Optional repo allowlist; repo names are validated; the token is never printed or returned.

GitHub's official MCP server covers general GitHub work (issues, PRs, code, Actions) and is the right choice for creating and editing. This server is narrower: triage views and duplicate/label suggestions computed on your machine, read-only unless you opt in, with nothing to install but Python. You can run both.

./demo.sh runs the real server over MCP against a fixture repo (acme/widget, 13 open items, 2 of them pull requests). ./run_tests.sh runs 19 offline tests, including both protocol eras, pagination, rate limits, the write opt-in and the repo allowlist.

• "No reply yet" means zero comments; get_issue checks whether a maintainer replied.
• Duplicate and similar-issue search is word-based (TF-IDF), not semantic: different words for the same bug can be missed. Always read both issues.
• Reports read up to max_issues (default 500) newest open items; very large repos use more API requests.
• Issues only: no pull request review, projects or discussions.

Also see the CSV & Excel MCP Server and the MCP Config Validator. License: LICENSE.txt.