glab mcp

Overview

  Manage Model Context Protocol server features for GitLab integration.
  The MCP server exposes GitLab features as tools for use by
  AI assistants (like Claude Code) to interact with GitLab projects, issues,
  merge requests, pipelines, and other resources.
  This feature is an experiment and is not ready for production use.
  It might be unstable or removed at any time.
  For more information, see
  https://docs.gitlab.com/policy/development_stages_support/.
  USAGE
    glab mcp <command> [command] [--flags]
  EXAMPLES
    $ glab mcp serve
  COMMANDS
    serve      Start a MCP server with stdio transport. (EXPERIMENTAL)
  FLAGS
    -h --help  Show help for this command.

Quick start

glab mcp --help

Current behavior

Auto-enabled JSON output

glab mcp serve automatically enables JSON output format when running — no manual flag needed. This improves parsing reliability for AI assistants consuming the MCP server's tool responses.

Unannotated commands excluded

Commands that lack MCP annotations are not registered as MCP tools. This means only explicitly supported commands are exposed to AI assistants, reducing noise and improving reliability. If a GitLab operation you expect isn't available as an MCP tool, it may lack MCP annotations.

Inherited flags advertised

MCP tool schemas include visible inherited flags accepted from parent commands, such as --repo on project-scoped operations. Pass these through the tool's flags object using the schema's underscore-normalized names (for example, repo); do not assume a flag is unavailable merely because it is registered on a parent command.

Subcommands

See references/commands.md for full --help output.