Setting Up the GitHub MCP Server

To connect your agent to GitHub, we'll use the official GitHub MCP server. GitHub hosts this server remotely at https://api.githubcopilot.com/mcp/, and authentication is done with a GitHub Personal Access Token passed in the request headers.

Creating a GitHub Personal Access Token

You'll need a GitHub Personal Access Token (PAT) to authenticate with the server.

1. Go to GitHub Settings > Developer settings > Personal access tokens > Fine-grained tokens
2. Give it a descriptive name (e.g., "Mastra Agent")
3. Select the repositories you want your agent to access
4. Under Repository permissions, grant at minimum:
   • Issues: Read
   • Pull requests: Read
   • Contents: Read
   • Metadata: Read (selected by default)
5. Click Generate token and copy it

Add the token to your .env file:

# Add this to your .env file
GITHUB_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN=your_github_token

Using an environment variable keeps your token secure and prevents it from being committed to your repository.

:::note If you prefer to run the GitHub MCP server locally instead of using the hosted endpoint, you can use npx as a stdio transport:

github: {
  command: 'npx',
  args: ['-y', '@modelcontextprotocol/server-github'],
  env: { GITHUB_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN: process.env.GITHUB_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN },
}

This does not require access to api.githubcopilot.com and works the same way as the hosted option. :::