@cyanheads/git-mcp-server

Empower your AI agents with comprehensive, secure, and programmatic control over Git repositories!

An MCP (Model Context Protocol) server providing a robust, LLM-friendly interface to the standard git command-line tool. Enables LLMs and AI agents to perform a wide range of Git operations like clone, commit, push, pull, branch, diff, log, status, and more via the MCP standard.

Built on the cyanheads/mcp-ts-template, this server follows a modular architecture with robust error handling, logging, and security features.

🤔 Why Use This Server?

• Automate Git Workflows: Enable AI agents to programmatically clone, commit, push, and manage branches.
• Gain Repository Insights: Allow tools to check status, view logs, and diff changes without direct shell access.
• Integrate Git into AI-driven Development: Let LLMs manage version control as part of their coding tasks.
• Production-Ready Foundation: Inherits logging, error handling, and security from the template.

🚀 Core Capabilities: Git Tools 🛠️

This server equips your AI with a comprehensive suite of tools to interact with Git repositories:

Tool Category	Description	Key Features -
Repository & Staging	Manage repository state, from initialization to staging changes.	- git_init: Initialize a new repository. - git_clone: Clone remote repositories. - git_add: Stage changes for commit. - git_status: Check the status of the working directory. - git_clean: Remove untracked files (requires force flag). -
Committing & History	Create commits, inspect history, and view changes over time.	- git_commit: Create new commits with conventional messages. - git_log: View commit history with filtering options. - git_diff: Show changes between commits, branches, or the working tree. - git_show: Inspect Git objects like commits and tags. -
Branching & Merging	Manage branches, merge changes, and rebase commits.	- git_branch: List, create, delete, and rename branches. - git_checkout: Switch between branches or commits. - git_merge: Merge branches together. - git_rebase: Re-apply commits on top of another base. - git_cherry_pick: Apply specific commits from other branches. -
Remote Operations	Interact with remote repositories.	- git_remote: Manage remote repository connections. - git_fetch: Download objects and refs from a remote. - git_pull: Fetch and integrate with another repository. - git_push: Update remote refs with local changes. -
Advanced Workflows	Support for more complex Git workflows and repository management.	- git_tag: Create, list, or delete tags. - git_stash: Temporarily store modified files. - git_worktree: Manage multiple working trees attached to a single repository. - git_set_working_dir: Set a persistent working directory for a session. - git_wrapup_instructions: Get a standard workflow for finalizing changes. -

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Table of Contents

| Overview | Features | Installation | | Configuration | Project Structure | | Tools | Resources | Development | License |

Overview

The Git MCP Server acts as a bridge, allowing applications (MCP Clients) that understand the Model Context Protocol (MCP) – like advanced AI coding assistants (LLMs), IDE extensions, or custom research tools – to interact directly and safely with local Git repositories.

Instead of complex scripting or manual command-line interaction, your tools can leverage this server to:

• Automate Git workflows: Clone repositories, create branches, stage changes, commit work, push updates, and manage tags programmatically.
• Gain repository insights: Check status, view logs, diff changes, and inspect Git objects without leaving the host application.
• Integrate Git into AI-driven development: Enable LLMs to manage version control as part of their coding or refactoring tasks, ensuring code integrity and history.
• Support CI/CD and DevOps automation: Build custom scripts and tools that orchestrate complex Git operations for automated builds, testing, and deployments.

Built on the robust mcp-ts-template, this server provides a standardized, secure, and efficient way to expose Git functionality via the MCP standard. It achieves this by securely executing the standard git command-line tool installed on the system using Node.js's child_process module, ensuring compatibility and leveraging the full power of Git.

Developer Note: This repository includes a .clinerules file that serves as a developer cheat sheet for your LLM coding agent with quick reference for the codebase patterns, file locations, and code snippets.

Features

Core Utilities

Leverages the robust utilities provided by the mcp-ts-template:

• Logging: Structured, configurable logging (file rotation, stdout JSON, MCP notifications) with sensitive data redaction.
• Error Handling: Centralized error processing, standardized error types (McpError), and automatic logging.
• Configuration: Environment variable loading (dotenv) with comprehensive validation.
• Input Validation/Sanitization: Uses zod for schema validation and custom sanitization logic (crucial for paths).
• Request Context: Tracking and correlation of operations via unique request IDs using AsyncLocalStorage.
• Type Safety: Strong typing enforced by TypeScript and Zod schemas.
• HTTP Transport: High-performance HTTP server using Hono, featuring session management, CORS, and authentication support.
• Deployment: Multi-stage Dockerfile for creating small, secure production images with native dependency support.

Git Integration

• Direct Git CLI Execution: Interacts with Git by securely executing the standard git command-line tool via Node.js child_process, ensuring full compatibility and access to Git's features.
• Comprehensive Command Coverage: Exposes a wide range of Git commands as MCP tools (see Tools section).
• Repository Interaction: Supports status checking, branching, staging, committing, fetching, pulling, pushing, diffing, logging, resetting, tagging, and more.
• Working Directory Management: Allows setting and clearing a session-specific working directory for context persistence across multiple Git operations.
• Safety Features: Includes checks and requires explicit confirmation for potentially destructive operations like git clean and git reset --hard.
• Commit Signing: Supports GPG or SSH signing for verified commits, controlled via the GIT_SIGN_COMMITS environment variable and server-side Git configuration. Includes an optional tool parameter to fall back to unsigned commits on signing failure.

Installation

Prerequisites

• Node.js (>=20.0.0)
• npm (comes with Node.js)
• Git installed and accessible in the system PATH.

MCP Client Settings

Add the following to your MCP client's configuration file (e.g., cline_mcp_settings.json). This configuration uses npx to run the server, which will automatically install the package if not already present:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "git-mcp-server": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["@cyanheads/git-mcp-server"],
      "env": {
        "MCP_LOG_LEVEL": "info",
        "GIT_SIGN_COMMITS": "false"
      }
    }
  }
}

If running manually (not via MCP client) for development or testing

Install via npm

npm install @cyanheads/git-mcp-server

3. Running the Server

• Production (Stdio):

  npm run start:stdio

• Production (HTTP):

  npm run start:http

• Development (Stdio with watch mode):

  npm run dev:stdio

• Development (HTTP with watch mode):

  npm run dev:http

⚙️ Configuration

Configure the server using these environment variables (or a .env file):

Variable	Description	Default
MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE	Transport mechanism: stdio or http.	stdio
MCP_HTTP_PORT	Port for the HTTP server (if MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE=http). Retries next ports if busy.	3015
MCP_HTTP_HOST	Host address for the HTTP server (if MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE=http).	127.0.0.1
MCP_ALLOWED_ORIGINS	Comma-separated list of allowed origins for CORS (if MCP_TRANSPORT_TYPE=http).	(none)
MCP_LOG_LEVEL	Logging level (debug, info, notice, warning, error, crit, alert, emerg). Inherited from template.	info
GIT_SIGN_COMMITS	Set to "true" to enable signing attempts for commits made by the git_commit tool. Requires server-side Git/key setup (see below).	false
MCP_AUTH_MODE	Authentication mode: jwt, oauth, or none.	none
MCP_AUTH_SECRET_KEY	Secret key for JWT validation (if MCP_AUTH_MODE=jwt).	''
OAUTH_ISSUER_URL	OIDC issuer URL for OAuth validation (if MCP_AUTH_MODE=oauth).	''
OAUTH_AUDIENCE	Audience claim for OAuth validation (if MCP_AUTH_MODE=oauth).	''

🏗️ Project Structure

• src/mcp-server/: Contains the core MCP server, tools, resources, and transport handlers.
• src/config/: Handles loading and validation of environment variables.
• src/types-global/: Defines shared TypeScript interfaces and type definitions.
• src/utils/: Core utilities (logging, error handling, security, etc.).
• src/index.ts: The main entry point that initializes and starts the server.

Explore the full structure yourself:

See the current file tree in docs/tree.md or generate it dynamically:

npm run tree

📦 Resources

In addition to tools, the server provides resources that offer contextual information about the Git environment.

Resource URI	Description
git://working-directory	Returns the currently configured working directory for the session as a JSON object. Shows NOT_SET if unset.

Development

This project is set up with modern tooling to ensure code quality and a smooth development experience.

Linting and Formatting

• ESLint: We use ESLint with the typescript-eslint plugin to enforce code quality and consistency. Run the linter with:

  npm run lint

  To automatically fix issues, run:

  npm run lint:fix

• Prettier: Code formatting is handled by Prettier. To format the entire codebase, run:

  npm run format

Type Checking

You can run the TypeScript compiler to check for type errors without emitting any files:

npm run typecheck

Testing

This server uses Vitest for testing.

• Run all tests once:

  npm test

• Run tests in watch mode:

  npm run test:watch

• Run tests and generate a coverage report:

  npm run test:coverage

Generating Documentation

API documentation is generated from JSDoc comments using TypeDoc. To generate the documentation, run:

npm run docs:generate

The output will be saved in the docs/api directory.

🧩 Extending the System

The canonical pattern for adding new tools is defined in the .clinerules file. It mandates a strict separation of concerns:

1. logic.ts: Contains the pure business logic, Zod schemas, and type definitions. This file throws structured errors on failure.
2. registration.ts: Acts as the "handler." It registers the tool with the server, wraps the logic call in a try...catch block, and formats the final success or error response.

This "Logic Throws, Handler Catches" pattern ensures that core logic remains pure and testable, while the registration layer handles all side effects and response formatting.

📜 License

This project is licensed under the Apache License 2.0. See the LICENSE file for details.