tagmanager-mcp

An MCP (Model Context Protocol) server for Google Tag Manager. Ask your AI assistant about your GTM setup — accounts, containers, tags, triggers, variables, unpublished changes — and let it edit the workspace draft: create, update and delete tags, triggers and variables, then version and publish the container. Works from Claude Code, Claude Desktop, or any MCP client.

Why this one?

• Authenticate once — no re-auth treadmill. Auth is plain Google Application Default Credentials (ADC) with your own OAuth client: the refresh token does not expire, so you log in once and forget it. No hosted OAuth session that lapses every few days and demands another round of browser clicking.

• No service account required. The server runs as you, using the GTM permissions your Google account already has. There is no service-account JSON key to create, grant container access to, rotate, or accidentally commit.

• Local and direct. Runs on your machine over stdio; your GTM data flows straight between you and tagmanager.googleapis.com. No third-party proxy in the middle.

• Built for LLM context windows. GTM's raw tag JSON is enormous (a single GA4 event tag is easily hundreds of lines). list_* tools return slim skeletons; get_* tools fetch full detail only when asked.

• Quota-aware by design. The GTM API allows only 25 requests per 100 seconds per project. The server retries rate limits (429/403) and server errors with exponential backoff, and self-throttles after the first hit. Errors come back as actionable messages, not raw stack traces.

Related MCP server: unboundai-gtm-mcp-server

Tools

Read

Write

Publish

The write safety model:

• Editing and going live are separate. Create/update/delete only touch the workspace draft; only publish_version changes what runs on the live site, and it needs confirm=true. You review changes in the GTM UI (or via get_workspace_status / get_live_version) before anything ships.

• Updates are merge patches. The model sends only the fields to change; the server re-reads the entity and submits its fingerprint, so a concurrent edit fails cleanly instead of being clobbered.

• Deletes and publishing need explicit confirmation (confirm=true) and are declared with destructiveHint. create_version is also destructive (it consumes the workspace) but does not gate on confirm.

• No blind retries on writes. Rate-limit rejections are retried (they happen before execution); ambiguous 5xx errors are not, so a create can never be silently duplicated.

Prerequisites

• Python >= 3.10

• pipx

• The gcloud CLI

• A Google account with access to your GTM containers

• Any GCP project you can enable an API on (used only for quota attribution)

Setup

1. Install

pipx install tagmanager-mcp

2. Enable the Tag Manager API on your quota project

gcloud services enable tagmanager.googleapis.com --project=YOUR_PROJECT

3. Create a Desktop OAuth client

Google blocks gcloud's built-in OAuth client for Tag Manager scopes ("This app is blocked"), so you bring your own:

• GCP Console → Google Auth Platform → Clients → Create client → Application type Desktop app → create, then download the JSON.

• On the Audience page, publish the app to Production. An app left in Testing status issues refresh tokens that expire after 7 days — the exact re-auth treadmill this project exists to avoid.

4. Log in

gcloud auth application-default login \
  --client-id-file=path/to/your-client.json \
  --scopes=https://www.googleapis.com/auth/tagmanager.readonly,https://www.googleapis.com/auth/tagmanager.edit.containers,https://www.googleapis.com/auth/tagmanager.edit.containerversions,https://www.googleapis.com/auth/tagmanager.publish,https://www.googleapis.com/auth/cloud-platform
gcloud auth application-default set-quota-project YOUR_PROJECT

Scopes are additive to what each tier needs: drop tagmanager.publish + tagmanager.edit.containerversions for edit-only (no publishing), or also drop tagmanager.edit.containers for a read-only setup. Tools outside your granted scopes fail with a clear re-login hint while everything else keeps working.

The browser will warn "Google hasn't verified this app" — it is your own app; choose Advanced → Continue.

Connect an MCP client

Claude Code starts from your shell and inherits its PATH, so the bare command works:

claude mcp add gtm -- tagmanager-mcp

Claude Desktop (claude_desktop_config.json) is launched by the OS and does not inherit your shell PATH, so give it the absolute path. Print it with which tagmanager-mcp:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "gtm": {
      "command": "/Users/you/.local/bin/tagmanager-mcp"
    }
  }
}

Example prompts

• "Which GTM accounts and containers do I have?"

• "How many tags are in the default workspace of container GTM-XXXXXXX, grouped by type?"

• "Which tags are paused?"

• "Show me the full config of the purchase tag and which triggers fire it."

• "Does the current workspace have unpublished changes? What changed?"

• "Find triggers that no tag references."

• "Pause every tag that fires on the checkout trigger."

• "Create a custom-event trigger for sign_up and a GA4 event tag that fires on it."

Quota

The GTM API is tightly limited: 10,000 requests/day and 0.25 QPS (25 requests per 100-second window) per GCP project — per-user quota overrides do not raise it. Ordinary audit conversations fit comfortably; avoid "every tag in every container" sweeps across many containers at once.

Troubleshooting

• "This app is blocked" during login — you used gcloud's default OAuth client; pass your own with --client-id-file (Setup step 3).

• 403 mentioning insufficient scopes — your ADC predates this setup; re-run the login command in Setup step 4.

• Errors mention enabling the API / quota project — run Setup step 2 and set-quota-project; the error message itself carries the exact commands.

Development

git clone https://github.com/jinchliu/tagmanager-mcp && cd tagmanager-mcp
python3 -m venv .venv
.venv/bin/pip install -e ".[dev]"

.venv/bin/nox -s tests    # stdlib unittest, fully offline
.venv/bin/nox -s lint     # black --check
.venv/bin/mcp dev tagmanager_mcp/server.py   # MCP Inspector

Point your MCP client at .venv/bin/tagmanager-mcp to run the checkout instead of the installed release.