CLI Arguments¶

Some MCP clients (like GitHub Copilot CLI) don't pass environment variables reliably. For those clients, configure the server with CLI arguments instead.

CLI arguments take precedence over environment variables.

Install the server once:

brew tap zereight/gitlab-mcp https://github.com/zereight/gitlab-mcp
brew install zereight/gitlab-mcp/zereight-mcp-gitlab

Or with npm:

npm install -g @zereight/mcp-gitlab

No global install? Pin npx to the previous stable release and keep the server flags after it, for example npx -y @zereight/mcp-gitlab@2.1.41 --token=.... Use @zereight/mcp-gitlab@latest if you always want the newest release.

Example config¶

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "gitlab": {
      "command": "zereight-mcp-gitlab",
      "args": ["--token=YOUR_GITLAB_TOKEN", "--api-url=https://gitlab.com/api/v4"],
      "tools": ["*"]
    }
  }
}

Available arguments¶

Argument	Equivalent env var	Description
`--token`	`GITLAB_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN`	GitLab Personal Access Token.
`--api-url`	`GITLAB_API_URL`	GitLab API URL (e.g., `https://gitlab.com/api/v4`).
`--read-only=true`	`GITLAB_READ_ONLY_MODE`	Enable read-only mode (deprecated — prefer `--permission-mode=readonly`).
`--permission-mode`	`GITLAB_PERMISSION_MODE`	`readonly`, `modify` (no delete tools), or `full`.
`--use-wiki=true`	`USE_GITLAB_WIKI`	Enable wiki API tools.
`--use-milestone=true`	`USE_MILESTONE`	Enable milestone API tools.
`--use-pipeline=true`	`USE_PIPELINE`	Enable pipeline API tools.
`--disable-version-check=true`	`GITLAB_DISABLE_VERSION_CHECK`	Disable the startup new-version notice.

Deprecation notice: --read-only=true and GITLAB_READ_ONLY_MODE are kept for backward compatibility but will be removed in a future major version. Use --permission-mode=readonly or GITLAB_PERMISSION_MODE=readonly instead.

For the full list of configuration options, see Environment Variables.