401 Bad credentials

[Amurmurmur]

Describe the bug

A clear and concise description of what the bug is.

Affected version

Please run docker run -i --rm ghcr.io/github/github-mcp-server ./github-mcp-server --version and paste the output below

server version v0.1.1 (7ab5d968e065f13a660cd123c2c5d0be6d8b6dbd) 2025-04-07T16:05:06Z

Steps to reproduce the behavior

1. Type this "List PRs for the current repo"
2. View the output
3. See error

Expected vs actual behavior

A clear and concise description of what you expected to happen and what actually happened.

Should list PRs for the current repo, however its just throwing 401, even tho the API key is correct and when I do the same command in curl, it works just fine with the same exact api key.

Logs

Paste any available logs. Redact if needed.
{"error":"MCP error -32603: failed to list pull requests: GET https://api.github.com/repos/myorg/myrepo/pulls?page=1&per_page=30&state=open:

[smadi0x86]

Are you sure there is no issue with your LLM client or your LLM session? Because I tried now and its working, could you please share additional details about your client setup.

Here is my test just now:

[juruen]

@Amurmurmu I can't reproduce this issue. Could you please try with another repo. Here's my suggestion:

• Start with a public repo first
• Try with your private/org repo, and be explicit about the repo name

Please, let us know how it goes.

[Klaster1]

Just experienced the same issue. Make sure your issued token has access to your private org repo and sufficient permissions. My token also had to be approved by an org admin, you can check the status on the token page. After that, MCP begun to list PRs.

[juruen]

@Amurmurmur as this looks like an issue with the token, please try the steps suggested above:

• Make sure that the token is not expired
• Make sure that it has access to your private/org repo, and if it requires SSO, it's SSO'ed
• Start by trying to list PRs from a public repo first
• Move to a private repo afterwards

Closing this for now, but please, feel free to re-open if you have more information or the steps above don't help/

[sergedoub]

I'm running into this issue and tried troubleshooting in all the suggested ways.
I've tried org token, personal token, even classic, and still getting 401s.

I've confirmed tokens through CLI, so it seems isolated to MCP.

[error] thub: Error calling tool 'search_repositories': MCP error -32603: failed to search repositories: GET https://api.github.com/search/repositories?page=1&per_page=10&q=user%3Asergedoub: 401 Bad credentials []

[MikePendo]

I have the same issue "401 Bad credentials" for getting authenticated user:
Error: MPC -32603: failed to get user: GET https://api.github.com/user: 401 Bad credentials []
running:
curl -H "Authorization: Bearer TOKEN" https://api.github.com/user
Works as expected

[imajus]

FYI it might be related to this. At least for me, removing quotes around the environment variable value resolved the issue.