GitHub recently announced the official release of its Model Context Protocol (MCP) server, which is in public preview as of April 4th, 2025. Engineers can integrate with GitHub APIs using this open-source server, enabling automation and AI-powered interactions with the GitHub ecosystem.
This announcement was made on GitHub’s official blog. GitHub MCP Server is developed in collaboration with Anthropic, rewriting their reference server in Go to improve usability ensuring the functionality of GitHub’s old server. The new MCP server introduces capabilities such as customizable tool descriptions, code scanning support, and a get_me function that enhances natural language interactions with private repositories.
Often described as the USB-C port for AI applications, MCP is an open protocol that standardizes how context is provided to large language models (LLMs). Fundamentally, MCP is a client-server architecture where a host application connects to multiple servers.
Source: Introduction – Model Context Protocol
In the above diagram, GitHub MCP Server aligns with the MCP Server components (labeled as MCP Server A, B and C), bridging the AI models and GitHub’s API ecosystem. Some of the GitHub features that could be leveraged using this MCP server include Tool Configuration and Dynamic Tool Discovery.
Drawing parallels with Microsoft’s Language Server Protocol (LSP), Cassidy Wiliams, Senior Director of Developer Advocacy at GitHub, said,
MCP takes a lot of its inspiration from LSP, and could be absolutely transformative for AI tooling. It allows for everyone, from the largest tech giants to the smallest indie developer shops, to enable robust AI solutions in any AI client with minimal setup.
In recent months, we are witnessing a wave of MCP server adoption from the industry leaders such as AWS, Azure, PayPal and Cloudflare.
Harald Kirschner, Principal Product Manager at Microsoft posted this announcement in the /mcp subreddit. The post received good engagement from the tech community.
Toby Padilla, Principal Product Manager at GitHub, highlighted the collaboration between GitHub MCP team and Microsoft’s VS Code team and invited questions, feedback from the community. Answering a query related to migrating from @modelcontextprotocol/server-github, Padilla mentioned that the future development will be happening in the latest github-mcp-server repository.
To get started with GitHub MCP Server, engineers need Docker and a GitHub Personal Access Token. One-click setup buttons and manual installation instructions are available in the repository.
