Tiger GitHub MCP Server is a lightweight wrapper around the GitHub API designed to provide targeted capabilities to large language models through the Model Context Protocol. Running the server compiles and serves an index.js bundle that interacts with GitHub on behalf of your LLM prompts, enabling focused tooling around a specific organization or repository. With the included environment variables, the server authenticates to GitHub and uses the provided organization or scope settings to fetch data, make queries, and expose structured results that can be reasoned about by the model. The inspector tooling mentioned in the project README can be used to exercise the MCP server from a web UI, helping you understand the inputs/outputs and validate the integration before using it in production prompts.

To use the server in your prompts, spawn the Node.js-based MCP server (dist/index.js) and route your calls through the MCP channel. The server is configured to read a GitHub token from GITHUB_TOKEN and is scoped to a GitHub organization via GITHUB_ORG. The included Claude Desktop example shows how to wire the server into Claude by specifying the node command, the absolute path to the compiled index.js, and the necessary environment variables. This allows Claude (or any MCP client) to leverage the server's GH data and actions within the established MCP workflow.

Prerequisites:

• Node.js and npm installed on your machine
• Git installed
• A GitHub personal access token with at least the following scopes: repo, read:org, read:user, user:email

Install and run locally:

1. Clone the repository git clone git@github.com:timescale/tiger-gh-mcp-server.git
2. Install dependencies and build npm i npm run build
3. Create and configure environment variables cp .env.sample .env Edit .env to set GITHUB_TOKEN and GITHUB_ORG if needed (see example in README)
4. Run the server (examples may vary based on project setup) npm start

   or run the built index directly with Node if you prefer

5. Optional: use the watcher for development npm run watch

If you want to test using the MCP Inspector (web UI): npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector

Use the inspector to connect to the running tiger-gh MCP server and validate inputs/outputs

Tips and common issues:

• Ensure your GITHUB_TOKEN has the necessary scopes (repo, read:org, read:user, user:email) before starting the server.
• If you modify environment variables, restart the MCP server to pick up changes.
• The Claude Desktop integration example requires an absolute path to the tiger-gh-mcp-server project; ensure you supply the correct path and a valid GitHub token in claude_desktop_config.json.
• When debugging, using the provided VS Code profile can simplify the build/run steps and provide source-map-enabled debugging for TypeScript sources.
• If you encounter authentication errors, verify that the token is not expired, and that the token has access to the required organization and repos.
• The server is designed to expose focused tooling around GitHub data for LLMS; consider restricting the token's permissions to only what is necessary for your use case.