youtrack

This MCP server exposes a comprehensive YouTrack integration that provides tool-based access to issues, sprints, time tracking, knowledge base content, and more. It supports standard MCP clients (e.g., Claude Desktop, VSCode MCP, Continue.dev, Cline, Zed) via stdio, or SSE-based remote connections for hosted usage. Once started, the server can be consumed by your MCP client to perform operations such as creating and updating issues, managing projects and saved searches, retrieving analytics like Gantt charts and critical path data, and handling time tracking, knowledge base articles, and agile workflows. The tooling catalog is designed to cover a broad portion of the YouTrack REST API, with capabilities like CRUD on issues, comments, transitions, bulk commands, search assistance, and audit/history tracking. Configure authentication and connect to your YouTrack instance using the provided environment variables, then select the YouTrack tools from your MCP client to begin work.

Prerequisites:

• Node.js (recommended LTS) installed on your machine
• npm or npm equivalent (comes with Node.js)
• Access to a YouTrack instance with a valid URL and token

Installation steps:

1. Clone the MCP server repository: git clone https://github.com/itsalfredakku/youtrack-mcp.git cd youtrack-mcp

2. Install dependencies: npm install

3. Create and configure environment variables. Example .env: YOUTRACK_URL=https://your-instance.youtrack.cloud YOUTRACK_TOKEN=your-permanent-token PROJECT_ID=PROJECT-1 LOG_LEVEL=info CACHE_ENABLED=true CACHE_TTL=300000 ENABLE_WEBHOOKS=false WEBHOOK_PORT=3000 WEBHOOK_SECRET=

4. Build and run the MCP server: npm run build npm start

5. Optional: For remote or SSE usage, expose the SSE endpoint as configured by your environment and use the appropriate client configuration.

Notes:

• Ensure the dist/index.js path matches where your built server resides.
• Absolute paths are recommended in MCP client configurations.
• Do not include trailing slashes in base URLs unless required by YouTrack.

Tips and caveats:

• Always provide a valid YouTrack URL and a long-lived token for YOUTRACK_TOKEN in production.
• If you enable CACHE_ENABLED, adjust CACHE_TTL to balance freshness and latency.
• When using webhooks, ensure WEBHOOK_PORT is open and WEBHOOK_SECRET is securely shared with the client.
• The server expects environment variables to be strings; quote values in shell settings.
• If upgrading YouTrack API versions, revalidate API coverage and run CI tests to catch compatibility issues.
• For local testing, you can start the server with: YOUTRACK_URL=https://your-instance.youtrack.cloud YOUTRACK_TOKEN=token node dist/index.js
• Common issues include misconfigured absolute paths, missing tokens, or mismatched base URLs (avoid trailing slashes where not needed).