GitHub MCP Server

A lightweight Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that provides structured access to GitHub repository data for AI agents.

This project enables AI systems to work with real GitHub data instead of relying on assumptions or hallucinated information.

📌 What Problem Does This Solve?

Manually analyzing GitHub repositories is:

Time-consuming
Inconsistent
Error-prone

AI systems often hallucinate repository details such as structure or documentation.

This MCP server solves that problem by exposing GitHub as reliable, AI-callable tools.

🧠 What is MCP?

Model Context Protocol (MCP) standardizes how AI models interact with external tools and data sources.

MCP ensures correctness
AI agents handle reasoning and decision-making

🚀 Features

This GitHub MCP Server allows AI agents to:

List public repositories of a GitHub user
Fetch README documentation of a repository
Access real-time GitHub data in a structured format
Avoid hallucinated or outdated repository information

🛠️ Available Tools

🔹 `github-mcp:list_repositories`

Description:
Lists all public repositories of a given GitHub user.

Input:

{
  "username": "torvalds"
}

Output:

[
  {
    "name": "linux",
    "url": "https://github.com/torvalds/linux"
  }
]

🔹 `github-mcp:get_readme`

Description: Fetches and returns the README content of a repository.

Input:

{
  "owner": "torvalds",
  "repo": "linux"
}

Output: Decoded README markdown text.

🏗️ Architecture Overview

AI Agent
   ↓
GitHub MCP Server
   ↓
GitHub REST API
   ↓
Real Repository Data

MCP Server: Tool layer
Agent: Reasoning layer

⚙️ Setup Instructions

1️⃣ Install dependencies

npm install

2️⃣ (Optional) Set GitHub Token

For higher rate limits or private repositories:

export GITHUB_TOKEN=your_token_here

3️⃣ Run MCP Server

node index.js

The server runs via STDIO and waits for MCP client requests.

🔌 Supported MCP Clients

Claude Desktop
Cursor IDE
Continue.dev
Any MCP-compatible client

🔐 Authentication Notes

Public repositories: No authentication required
Private repositories: GitHub Personal Access Token required

🚧 Limitations

Does not perform deep code analysis
Does not modify repositories
Provides repository data access only

🌱 Future Enhancements

Issue and pull request tools
Commit history analysis
Repository health metrics
Organization-level insights

Just tell me 👍

GitHub