Github Brain

GitHub Brain MCP Server

GitHub Brain is an experimental MCP server for summarizing GitHub discussions, issues, and pull requests. Answer questions like:

• What are the contributions of user X in the last month?
• Summarize this month's discussions.

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/80910025-9d58-4367-af00-bf4c51e6ce86

GitHub Brain complements (but does not replace) the official GitHub MCP server. It stores GitHub data in a local database for:

• Fast responses
• More than the standard 100-item API limit
• Token-efficient Markdown output

GitHub Brain is programmed in Markdown.

Installation

npm i -g github-brain

Rerun to update. sudo may be required on some systems.

Alternatively use npx to run without installing globally and needing sudo.

npx github-brain@latest

Usage

github-brain

Or with npx:

npx github-brain@latest

Launches the interactive TUI where you can:

1. Setup - Configure authentication and settings

• Login with GitHub (OAuth) - Recommended for most users
• Login with Personal Access Token - For fine-grained tokens or when OAuth is unavailable
• Open configuration file - Edit .env directly

1. Pull - Populate the local database with GitHub data

Re-run pull anytime to update the database with new GitHub data.

The app loads environment variables from a .env file in the GitHub Brain's home directory - ~/.github-brain by default.

Example .env file

GITHUBTOKEN=yourgithub_token ORGANIZATION=my-org

| Argument | Description | | :------- | :----------------------------------------- | | -m | Home directory. Default: ~/.github-brain |

Personal access token scopes

Use fine-grained personal access tokens.

Private organizations: Token needs read access to discussions, issues, metadata, and pull requests. Generate token.

Public organizations: Any token works (data is publicly accessible).

MCP Server

Start the MCP server using the local database:

github-brain mcp

Or with npx:

npx github-brain@latest mcp

| Argument | Variable | Description | | :------- | :------------- | :----------------------------------------- | | -o | ORGANIZATION | GitHub organization. Required. | | -m | | Home directory. Default: ~/.github-brain |

MCP Configuration

Claude

Add to the Claude MCP configuration file:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "github-brain": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "github-brain",
      "args": ["mcp"]
    }
}

Or with npx:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "github-brain": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["github-brain@latest", "mcp"]
    }
}

Merge with existing mcpServers if present.

VS Code

Add to the VS Code MCP configuration file:

{
  "servers": {
    "github-brain": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "github-brain",
      "args": ["mcp"],
      "version": "0.0.1"
    }
  }
}

Or with npx:

{
  "servers": {
    "github-brain": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["github-brain@latest", "mcp"],
      "version": "0.0.1"
    }
  }
}

Merge with existing servers if present.

Development

scripts/run builds and runs github-brain with the checkout directory as home -m (database in db/, config in .env).

Source & license

This open-source MCP server is cataloged on AgentStack and links to its original source — we do not rehost the code.

• Author: wham
• Source: wham/github-brain
• License: MIT

Install and usage instructions live in the source repository linked above.