atlassian-mcp

A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for self-hosted Jira (Server / Data Center) and self-hosted Bitbucket (Server / Data Center). Exposes tools for natural-language workflows around tickets, pull requests, review threads, and git context.

Note: This server only supports self-hosted instances. Jira Cloud and Bitbucket Cloud use different APIs and are not supported.

Tools

Workflow

Git

Jira

Bitbucket

Natural language examples

• "what am I working on?" → get_dev_context

• "make a branch for FOO-123" → start_work

• "ship this / merge and close the ticket" → complete_work

• "show my PRs waiting for review" → bitbucket_search with mine=true

• "list open PRs for this repo from feature/ABC-123" → bitbucket_search with fromBranch

• "give me a full overview of PR 42" → bitbucket_get_pr

• "open a PR from my current branch to master" → bitbucket_mutate with create

• "approve / merge / decline PR 42" → bitbucket_mutate with action

• "reply to comment 123 on PR 42" → bitbucket_comment with commentId=123

• "resolve this blocker on PR 42" → bitbucket_comment with action=update, severity=BLOCKER, state=RESOLVED

• "list PR checklist tasks" → bitbucket_pr_tasks with action=list

• "find bugs assigned to me in PAY project" → jira_search with mine=true, issueType=Bug

• "what's in the current sprint?" → jira_search with resource=board_overview

• "move FOO-123 to In Progress" → jira_mutate with transitionName="In Progress"

• "log 2h on FOO-123" → jira_mutate with worklog

• "create version 9.1.0 in PAY" → jira_version with action=create, projectKey=PAY, name=9.1.0

• "list releases for PAY" → jira_search with resource=versions, project=PAY

• "release version 12345" → jira_version with action=release, id=12345

• "set fix version 9.1.0 on FOO-123" → jira_mutate with update.fixVersion=9.1.0

• "create a task under epic FOO-100" → jira_mutate with create.issueType=Task, create.parent=FOO-100 (auto-detects Epic and sets Epic Link)

• "move FOO-123 under epic FOO-100" → jira_mutate with update.epicLink=FOO-100

Related MCP server: Bitbucket Server MCP

Setup

1. Create a config file

Create ~/.atlassian-mcp.json:

{
  "$schema": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/stubbedev/atlassian-mcp/master/atlassian-mcp.schema.json",
  "jira": {
    "url": "https://jira.example.com",
    "token": "your-jira-personal-access-token"
  },
  "bitbucket": {
    "url": "https://bitbucket.example.com",
    "token": "your-bitbucket-personal-access-token"
  }
}

The $schema field is optional but enables editor autocomplete and validation.

• projectKey means a project code:

  • Jira example: PAY in ticket PAY-123

  • Bitbucket example: project ENG in repo path ENG/payments-service

• You can also use ergonomic aliases:

  • Jira: project (alias of projectKey)

  • Bitbucket: project and repo (aliases of projectKey and repoSlug)

• For Bitbucket tools, projectKey and repoSlug are usually auto-detected from your local origin remote.

• bitbucket_create_pull_request also auto-detects fromBranch from your current branch and returns the existing open PR if one already exists for that branch.

• Jira project-scoped calls accept projectKey and work best when provided.

• If projectKey is omitted for Jira issue creation/type lookup, the server tries to infer it from your current branch ticket key, falls back to auto-select when only one project is visible, and otherwise returns a numbered project list to pick from.

Alternatively, use environment variables (or a .env file in this directory):

JIRA_URL=https://jira.example.com
JIRA_ACCESS_TOKEN=your-jira-personal-access-token
BITBUCKET_URL=https://bitbucket.example.com
BITBUCKET_ACCESS_TOKEN=your-bitbucket-personal-access-token

Config is resolved in this order: --config <path> CLI arg → ATLASSIAN_MCP_CONFIG env var → ~/.atlassian-mcp.json → $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/atlassian-mcp/config.json (default ~/.config/atlassian-mcp/config.json) → .atlassian-mcp.json in cwd → environment variables.

2. Connect to your AI tool

No cloning or building required — just point your tool at npx @stubbedev/atlassian-mcp@latest and it will install and run automatically.

Note: --prefer-online can break MCP startup in some clients. Keep the command simple and use the update steps below when you want to refresh.

Claude Code

claude mcp add atlassian -- npx -y @stubbedev/atlassian-mcp@latest --config ~/.atlassian-mcp.json

Cursor

Add to ~/.cursor/mcp.json (global) or .cursor/mcp.json (project-only):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "atlassian": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@stubbedev/atlassian-mcp@latest", "--config", "/Users/you/.atlassian-mcp.json"]
    }
  }
}

Windsurf

Add to ~/.codeium/windsurf/mcp_config.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "atlassian": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@stubbedev/atlassian-mcp@latest", "--config", "/Users/you/.atlassian-mcp.json"]
    }
  }
}

Zed

Add to ~/.config/zed/settings.json:

{
  "context_servers": {
    "atlassian": {
      "command": {
        "path": "npx",
        "args": ["-y", "@stubbedev/atlassian-mcp@latest", "--config", "/home/you/.atlassian-mcp.json"]
      }
    }
  }
}

OpenCode

Add to opencode.json in your project root (or ~/.config/opencode/opencode.json for global):

{
  "$schema": "https://opencode.ai/config.json",
  "mcp": {
    "atlassian": {
      "type": "local",
      "command": ["npx", "-y", "@stubbedev/atlassian-mcp@latest", "--config", "/home/you/.atlassian-mcp.json"]
    }
  }
}

Codex CLI

Add to ~/.codex/config.yaml:

mcpServers:
  atlassian:
    command: npx
    args:
      - -y
      - @stubbedev/atlassian-mcp@latest
      - --config
      - /home/you/.atlassian-mcp.json

Any other MCP-compatible tool

Most tools that support MCP accept the same JSON format. Use npx as the command with ["-y", "@stubbedev/atlassian-mcp@latest", "--config", "/path/to/config.json"] as the args.

Updating existing installs

If your MCP client is already configured and you want the newest package version:

npx clear-npx-cache

Then restart your MCP client.

Install without npm

The server is a single static Go binary. The npx path above downloads the prebuilt binary for your platform on first run; these alternatives skip Node entirely:

# Go toolchain — installs to $GOBIN / $GOPATH/bin
go install github.com/stubbedev/atlassian-mcp@latest

# Nix flake
nix run github:stubbedev/atlassian-mcp -- --config ~/.atlassian-mcp.json

Then point your MCP client's command at the resulting atlassian-mcp binary instead of npx. On these paths ffmpeg/ffprobe must be available on PATH (or set ATLASSIAN_MCP_FFMPEG_PATH / ATLASSIAN_MCP_FFPROBE_PATH); the npm wrapper bundles them automatically.

Running as an HTTP server (shared / behind a proxy)

By default the server speaks MCP over stdio (one process per client, launched by your editor). It can instead run as a long-lived Streamable HTTP server that many clients share — useful behind a reverse proxy:

atlassian-mcp --http                 # binds 127.0.0.1:7337
atlassian-mcp --http 127.0.0.1:9000  # custom address
ATLASSIAN_MCP_HTTP=1 atlassian-mcp   # same, via env

• Single endpoint POST /mcp (JSON-RPC) plus an optional GET /mcp SSE stream that carries server→client requests (roots/list, elicitation). The server is stateful: initialize mints a session and returns an Mcp-Session-Id header, which the client must echo on every subsequent request and on the SSE stream. Requests with a missing/unknown/expired session id get HTTP 404 so the client re-initializes (standard MCP-client behaviour). Each connected client/worktree is an isolated session.

• Auth: on a loopback bind no token is needed. Binding a non-loopback address requires ATLASSIAN_MCP_HTTP_TOKEN (sent by clients as Authorization: Bearer …); the server refuses to start otherwise. Terminate TLS at your proxy.

• GET /healthz is an unauthenticated liveness probe (returns ok) for proxies/load balancers. Idle sessions are evicted after 1h.

Repo context comes from the client, not the server's working directory. Tools that need a repo (the git_* tools, get_dev_context, start_work, complete_work, and Bitbucket project/repo auto-detection) resolve it in this order: an explicit repoPath argument → a root pinned via request header (see below) → the client's MCP workspace roots (the server asks via roots/list, caches per session, and refreshes on notifications/roots/list_changed) → the process cwd (stdio only). So one shared HTTP server handles many worktrees: each client's own workspace drives its calls. When a session exposes several roots (multiple worktrees), a tool with no repoPath uses the first git-repo root; pass repoPath (an absolute path, or a worktree name/basename that matches one of the roots) to target a specific worktree. For Bitbucket, passing projectKey+repoSlug explicitly skips repo detection entirely. The repos must be reachable on the server's host (the git tools run git locally).

Pinning the root via a request header (HTTP). A reverse proxy or harness that already knows the working tree can hand it to the server directly, skipping the roots/list round-trip (and working even when the client never advertised the roots capability). Send a file:// URI or absolute path (comma-separated for multiple; first git repo wins):

X-Mcp-Root: file:///srv/myrepo
X-Mcp-Roots: /srv/a, /srv/b

Accepted header names: X-Mcp-Roots, X-Mcp-Root, Mcp-Roots, Mcp-Root. A header value is authoritative — it takes precedence over roots/list and survives list_changed.

Client config for an already-running HTTP server (Claude Code example):

claude mcp add --transport http atlassian http://127.0.0.1:7337/mcp

Attachment decoding pipeline

The attachment tools (jira_get_attachment, bitbucket_get_attachment) decode binary attachments into model-readable content before returning them:

Auto-saved files are periodically pruned by TTL and total-size quota — see Environment overrides below.

External tools (optional)

Image and PDF-text decoding are pure Go and need nothing extra. The two pipelines that have no pure-Go implementation shell out to external binaries:

• ffmpeg + ffprobe — video and animated-image frame sampling. The npm wrapper bundles ffmpeg-static / ffprobe-static and injects their paths, so the npx install path is zero-config. On the go install / Nix paths, install ffmpeg (it provides ffprobe) or set the env vars below.

• pdftoppm (poppler) or mutool (MuPDF) — only needed to rasterize scanned PDFs that have no extractable text. If neither is on PATH, such PDFs are saved to disk instead.

Environment overrides

Releases (Maintainers)

This package is published to npm as @stubbedev/atlassian-mcp.

Use semantic versioning for releases. Breaking tool-surface changes should bump the minor version while <1.0.0 (for example 0.0.x -> 0.1.0).

On a pushed v* tag, .github/workflows/publish.yml cross-compiles the Go binary for 14 OS/arch targets, attaches them to a GitHub release, and publishes the npm wrapper (which downloads the matching binary on install).

Release flow:

# choose one: patch | minor | major (also: npm run release:patch / :minor / :major)
npm version patch          # bumps package.json, commits, tags vX.Y.Z
git push origin HEAD --follow-tags

flake.nix reads its version from package.json, so the Nix package tracks the same bump automatically. GitHub Actions builds + publishes from the pushed tag.

• The workflow is configured for npm Trusted Publisher (OIDC), so no NPM_TOKEN secret is required

Required npm setup (one-time):

• In npm package settings, add this GitHub repo/workflow as a Trusted Publisher

Creating Personal Access Tokens

Jira Server / Data Center

Personal Access Tokens are supported from Jira 8.14 onwards.

1. Log in to your Jira instance.

2. Click your profile avatar in the top-right corner and select Profile.

3. In the left sidebar, click Personal Access Tokens.

4. Click Create token.

5. Give the token a name (e.g. atlassian-mcp) and optionally set an expiry date.

6. Click Create and copy the token — it will only be shown once.

Paste the token as the token value under jira in your config file.

If your Jira version is older than 8.14, you can use HTTP Basic Auth instead — but this server only supports Bearer token (PAT) authentication.

Bitbucket Server / Data Center

Personal Access Tokens are supported from Bitbucket Server 5.5 onwards.

1. Log in to your Bitbucket instance.

2. Click your profile avatar in the top-right corner and select Manage account.

3. In the left sidebar, under Security, click Personal access tokens.

4. Click Create a token.

5. Give the token a name (e.g. atlassian-mcp).

6. Set the permissions:

   • Projects: Read

   • Repositories: Read + Write (Write is needed to create pull requests and add comments)

7. Optionally set an expiry date.

8. Click Create and copy the token — it will only be shown once.

Paste the token as the token value under bitbucket in your config file.

Development

The server is a single Go module at the repo root (no src/ tree).

# Build the binary
go build -o atlassian-mcp .

# Run it
./atlassian-mcp --config /path/to/config.json

# Vet + unit tests
go vet ./...
go test ./...

# Test the tool list
echo '{"jsonrpc":"2.0","id":1,"method":"tools/list","params":{}}' | ./atlassian-mcp

# Quick release smoke check (build + tools/list validation)
npm run smoke