Class 9 · 9.3

GitHub: repo, token & MCP server

Give Claude Code a home for the code. Create the repo, mint a careful least-privilege access token, wire up the GitHub MCP server, and drive a full issue → pull request → merge loop.

🎯 Goal: Claude drives GitHub⏱ Read: 15 min🧭 Type: hands-on + security

Jira gives us work. GitHub gives us a home for the code — and a way to review changes as pull requests. Now we connect Claude Code to GitHub the same way we connected Jira: through an MCP server. Along the way you will learn a security habit worth its weight in gold: fine-grained, least-privilege access tokens.

01Create the repository

On github.com, press New to create a repository. We build everything from scratch, so make your own rather than cloning someone else's.

Name & describe1 min

Name it pre-legal; description: “A platform for drafting common legal agreements.”

Keep it private (for now)30 sec

Private while you build; you can make it public later so others can clone it.

Add a licence & README30 sec

Add the MIT licence (permissive and friendly) and a generic README so the repo is not empty. Press Create repository.

02Create a fine-grained access token

We are about to give Claude Code the ability to act on our repo. That power must be scoped carefully. GitHub's fine-grained personal access tokens let us grant the minimum needed, on one repo, with an expiry. Finding the screen is fiddly — here is the path:

Where the setting hides

Your avatar menu → Settings → scroll all the way down to Developer settings → Personal access tokens → Fine-grained tokens → Generate new token. (You may be asked for your password or a two-factor code — that is the point; this is powerful.)

Now configure it with the principle of least privilege: start small, open up only if you must.

Setting	Choose	Why
Name	`for MCP server`	So you remember what it is for.
Expiration	30 days	A short life limits damage if it ever leaks.
Repository access	Only pre-legal	The token can touch nothing else you own.
Contents	Read	See the files in the repo.
Issues	Read & write	Read and raise GitHub Issues (in case you use them instead of Jira).
Pull requests	Read & write	Open and update PRs — the heart of the workflow.

Press Generate token, review the summary, and generate. The next screen shows the token once. Copy it and keep it somewhere safe.

Do NOT paste your token into Microsoft Word

Word (and other rich editors) “helpfully” turn straight quotes into curly quotes and can mangle the string — and a mangled token silently fails. Keep it in a plain text place, or just leave the GitHub tab open to one side so you can copy it again in a moment. Treat a token like a password: never commit it, never share it.

03Clone the repo locally

Back on your repo, press Code and copy the HTTPS URL. In a terminal, go to your projects folder and clone it:

terminal

cd ~/projects
git clone https://github.com/<you>/pre-legal.git
cd pre-legal
ls    # you should see LICENSE and README

Open the folder in VS Code (File → Open, trust the authors). This is the home of our new project.

04Add the GitHub MCP server

Now connect Claude Code to GitHub with another remote MCP server — this time authenticating with the token you just created. You pass it in a request header:

terminal

# replace <YOUR_TOKEN> with the fine-grained token you copied
claude mcp add --transport http github https://api.githubcopilot.com/mcp \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer <YOUR_TOKEN>"

Wait — weren't we told to start with plugins?

Yes! And normally you would. We are wiring Jira and GitHub as raw MCP servers for two reasons: they are two of the most famous, powerful, widely-used servers in the community, and they use these very particular authorisation techniques — which are cleanest to do straight through the MCP server. (There is even an official GitHub plugin; it works much the same, just with a different auth setup.)

Start claude, run /context, and you will see a whole set of GitHub tools now available.

05Take it for a spin: issue → PR → merge

Let us prove the whole loop works, in three plain-English asks.

Raise an issue1 min

“Please write an issue to GitHub that the README needs to be updated.” Claude uses the create issue tool; approve it. Check GitHub — under Issues, there it is: Update README.

Change code and open a PR2 min

“Please update the README to reflect that the project is in progress and will be completed in one week. Then raise a PR for this to be merged.” Claude edits the file, runs local git commands to commit and push (these are plain shell, not MCP), then uses the GitHub tool to open a pull request.

Review and merge1 min

Open the PR on GitHub. Note the tidy summary and the “Generated with Claude Code” attribution it adds. Press Merge pull request → Confirm merge. The README on main now shows the update.

One bit of housekeeping

After a merge you may be sitting on the PR's branch locally. Run git status to check, then git checkout main to return to the main branch. If Git workflow is new to you, do not worry — it is standard team stuff, and Claude Code can handle most of it for you.

✓ Key takeaways

Create a dedicated repo (pre-legal) with an MIT licence and a README to start from.
Use a fine-grained token: least privilege, one repo, a 30-day expiry — contents (read), issues and PRs (read/write).
Never paste a token into Word (curly quotes corrupt it); treat it like a password.
Connect GitHub with claude mcp add … --header "Authorization: Bearer <token>".
We use raw MCP for Jira/GitHub because they are famous, powerful, and use specific auth flows — and the whole issue → PR → merge loop now works from plain English.