GitLab MCP Server

MCP (Model Context Protocol) server for AI-assisted code review with GitLab on-premise instances.

Features

Merge Request Tools

• List, get, create, update merge requests

• Set MR draft status

• List changed files, get one file's diff or all MR changes

• Get MR commits and pipelines

• Get notes and discussions, add notes, start discussions on the MR or on a diff line

• Reply to, resolve, edit and delete comments

• Approve, unapprove, merge MRs

Repository Tools

• List projects

• Browse repository tree

• Get file content, whole or by line range, and blame

• Search code

• List branches and commits

Related MCP server: GitLab MCP Server

Security Model

Uses OAuth with intersection-based access control:

• User authenticates via GitLab OAuth

• AI access limited to repos both user AND service account can access

• All API calls made with service account token for audit trail

Prerequisites

• Python 3.11+

• GitLab instance with OAuth application configured

• SSL certificate for HTTPS

Setup

1. GitLab OAuth Application

Create in GitLab Admin > Applications:

• Redirect URI: https://<server-host>:<port>/oauth/callback

• Scopes: read_user, read_api, read_repository, api (for write operations)

• Confidential: Yes

2. Secrets File

Create a JSON file with credentials:

{
  "oauth_client_id": "<gitlab-oauth-app-id>",
  "oauth_client_secret": "<gitlab-oauth-app-secret>",
  "service_token": "<service-account-personal-access-token>"
}

3. Environment Variables

4. Install

pip install .

Running

gitlab-mcp

Docker

Each release is published to the GitHub Container Registry:

docker pull ghcr.io/synclyai/gitlab-mcp:1.1.1
docker pull ghcr.io/synclyai/gitlab-mcp:latest

To build locally instead, the image installs a pre-built wheel and dist/ is the build context:

make image

Equivalent to building the wheel into an emptied dist/ and running docker build -f Dockerfile -t ghcr.io/synclyai/gitlab-mcp:<version> dist/, so a local build carries the same name as the published image. The wheel is built with venv/bin/python, so the dev extra must be installed.

Development

pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest