Scrapbook: GitLab MCP Support

Initial Questions

• Does an MCP server for GitLab already exist? There are MCP servers for GitHub (e.g., `github-mcp`, `mcp-server-github`). GitLab support is less common but might be present.


• Could we adapt an existing GitHub MCP server by changing the API client? That would save time.


• GitLab’s API is feature‑rich; we should design tools that are intuitive for AI agents: high‑level actions like “create MR from branch” rather than low‑level raw API calls.

Candidate Existing Projects

• Model Context Protocol’s official server list: https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/servers – includes servers for GitHub, filesystem, SQL, etc. No official GitLab server yet.


• Community: search GitHub for “gitlab mcp” or “mcp gitlab”. Might find `gitlab-mcp-server` or similar.


• Alternatives: Some AI agents use direct REST calls via `curl` or custom scripts; but an MCP server would standardize the interface.

Design Principles

• Tools should be opinionated to reduce complexity: e.g., `gitlab.create_merge_request` takes source branch, target branch, title, description, and optional assignees/labels.


• File operations: support creating/updating files in a repo (like GitHub’s `create_or_update_file`). GitLab API has “Create a file” and “Update a file” endpoints; we can unify.


• CI/CD: `gitlab.trigger_pipeline(project, ref=branch)`; `gitlab.list_pipeline_jobs(pipeline_id)`.


• Idempotency: `create_issue` should be safe to call multiple times? Could be designed to find existing open issue by title and return it.


• Security: tokens should be scoped appropriately (api, read_repo, write_repo, etc.).

API Nuggets

• GitLab REST API base: `/api/v4/`


• Common endpoints:


• Projects: `GET /projects`, `POST /projects`, `GET /projects/:id`


• Issues: `GET /projects/:id/issues`, `POST /projects/:id/issues`


• Merge Requests: `GET /projects/:id/merge_requests`, `POST /projects/:id/merge_requests`


• Repository files: `GET /projects/:id/repository/files/:file_path`, `PUT /projects/:id/repository/files/:file_path`


• Pipelines: `POST /projects/:id/pipeline`, `GET /projects/:id/pipelines`


• Authentication: `PRIVATE-TOKEN: <token>` header or `Authorization: Bearer <token>` (OAuth).


• URL encoding: project ID can be `path` (e.g., `group%2Fproject`) or numeric ID.


• Webhooks: could be used to push events to an agent; but MCP is request/response, so we’d still poll or combine with separate webhook listener.

Next

• Quick search for existing MCP servers for GitLab.


• If none, plan to build one in Go or TypeScript.