Issues, pull requests, CI runs, repo browsing — an MCP server is the standard way to give a coding agent real GitHub access. One official server dominates this job; building your own is the fallback for unusual workflows.
GitHub's own official MCP server — maintained by the vendor, which matters for something holding your repo credentials. Works with any MCP client (Claude Code, Cursor, and others).
— You need write-heavy automation beyond what the API surface exposes.
If your workflow needs endpoints the official server doesn't expose, FastMCP is the fastest way to write a custom MCP server in Python around exactly the GitHub API calls you want.
— You want a ready-made server — this is the toolkit for building one.
Scope the token you hand any MCP server: a fine-grained GitHub token limited to the repos it needs, read-only unless the agent genuinely must write. Review what tools the server exposes before connecting it — write access to your repos is the blast radius.
