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This MCP server integrates Claude Desktop with GitHub, enabling Claude to interact with GitHub repositories via a set of focused commands. It exposes capabilities such as listing open pull requests, fetching details for specific PRs, summarizing changes with diff highlights, commenting on PRs, requesting reviewers, merging or closing PRs, and even creating or deleting repositories. To use it, install and run the MCP server, then issue commands like list-prs for a repository or discuss-pr for a particular PR. The server authenticates with GitHub using a personal access token supplied through the environment variable GITHUB_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN. Example commands available include list-prs, discuss-pr, summarize-pr, comment-on-pr, request-reviewers, merge-pr, close-pr, create-repository, and delete-repository, each mapped to natural language prompts such as “Show me open PRs for owner/repo” or “Merge PR #101 in owner/repo.”

Prerequisites:

• Node.js 16+ installed on your system
• NPM (comes with Node.js)
• A GitHub account with a personal access token that has repo permissions

Installation steps:

1. Install the MCP package globally: npm install -g claude-github-mcp

2. Prepare a configuration that points to the MCP server (example provided in the README shows the following JSON): { "mcpServers": { "github-pr": { "command": "claude-github-mcp", "env": { "GITHUB_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN": "your_github_token_here" } } } }

3. Save the configuration to the appropriate location used by your MCP runner (refer to your MCP host setup for how to load the mcp_config).

4. Start or restart the MCP service so it picks up the new server configuration. Ensure the environment variable GITHUB_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN is set either in the config or in your shell environment if required by your runner.

Tips and notes:

• Ensure your GitHub token has the necessary permissions (repo scope for private repos, public_repo for public access).
• Store the token securely; avoid committing it to source control.
• The README example uses the token via GITHUB_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN in the mcp_config. Some environments may require exporting the variable in your shell or a dotenv approach depending on how you run MCP servers.
• If you encounter authentication errors, double-check token scopes and that the MCP server is using the correct token value.
• The available commands map closely to common PR workflows: listing PRs, viewing details, summarizing changes with diffs, commenting, requesting reviewers, merging, closing, and repository creation/deletion. Use descriptive natural language prompts to trigger the corresponding command.
• When creating or deleting repositories, ensure you have the required permissions on the GitHub account associated with the token.