Efficient Gitlab MCP server

Efficient GitLab MCP

[!CAUTION]

This repository is archived (2026-05-22).

Upstream zereight/gitlab-mcp v2.1+ has independently implemented progressive disclosure and schema slimming (commit 44983ec). The differentiators that justified this fork no longer apply — please use upstream instead.

Token-efficient GitLab MCP server. A fork of zereight/gitlab-mcp re-architected for agent context budgets: 167 tools delivered through 3 meta-tools, with field projection on every list endpoint, server-side file trimming, and keyset pagination on large directories.

If your agent's first turn against an MCP server costs ~20K tokens of tool definitions before you've asked anything, this fork is for you.

Quick Start

Prerequisites

• A GitLab Personal Access Token with api scope (or read_api for read-only). Create one →
• Node.js 18+ (for npx) or Bun 1.0+ (for bunx)

MCP client config (recommended for most users)

Add this to your MCP client config — Claude Desktop, Cursor, Claude Code, IDE extensions, etc.:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "gitlab": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["efficient-gitlab-mcp-server@latest"],
      "env": {
        "GITLAB_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN": "glpat-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx",
        "GITLAB_API_URL": "https://gitlab.com"
      }
    }
  }
}

Restart your client. The server is live with 3 meta-tools (listcategories, activatetools, deactivate_tools). Your agent discovers GitLab tools by activating categories on demand — see How It Works for a worked example.

Prefer bun? Replace "command": "npx" with "command": "bunx".

Variants

Self-hosted GitLab — point at your instance's base URL (the server appends /api/v4 itself):

"env": {
  "GITLAB_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN": "glpat-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx",
  "GITLAB_API_URL": "https://gitlab.your-company.com"
}

Pinned to a single project — agents don't need to repeat project_id; it's used as a default:

Shortened. The full README is on GitHub.