MCP Linear

A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for the Linear GraphQL API, built for real project-management workflows — not just basic issue CRUD.

Features

MCP Linear bridges AI assistants and Linear by implementing the MCP protocol. With it you can:

• Retrieve issues, projects, teams, cycles, milestones, roadmaps, customers, customer needs, and workspace/project/initiative/team/issue/release/cycle documents
• Create and update issues, change status, assign, and comment
• Manage projects, full diff-aware project and initiative update lifecycles, milestones, roadmaps, saved views, and favorites
• Work with templates, custom fields, webhooks, and attachments
• Work with customer records, customer statuses/tiers, and customer needs linked to issues or projects
• Read notifications, subscriptions, sessions, audits, and integrations without leaving MCP
• Inspect rate-limit and server health before running heavy planning sessions

See [TOOLS.md](./TOOLS.md) for the full inventory.

MCP-native resources and prompts

The server exposes MCP resources and prompts in addition to tools, including:

• Resources: linear://viewer, linear://organization, linear://teams, linear://projects, linear://project/{id}, linear://project/{id}/issues, linear://project/{id}/documents, linear://issue/{id}, linear://document/{id}, linear://roadmap/{id}, linear://milestone/{id}, linear://rate-limit
• Prompts: summarize-project-status, draft-project-update, triage-issue, summarize-document

Example prompts

Once connected, you can use prompts like:

• "Show me all my Linear issues"
• "Create a new issue titled 'Fix login bug' in the Frontend team"
• "Change the status of issue FE-123 to 'In Progress'"
• "Assign issue BE-456 to John Smith"
• "Show all open issues in this project grouped by milestone and cycle"
• "Draft a weekly project update from the current Linear state"
• "Find the newest documents related to a project and summarize the key decisions"
• "Show the pinned documents and links on this team's home page"
• "Create a document for ENG-123 with resource ordering metadata"
• "Get the latest project update diff and archive an outdated update"
• "Show customer needs for this project and mark the important ones"
• "Create an initiative update and hide the generated diff from the update body"

Installation

Getting your Linear API token

1. Log in to your Linear account at linear.app

2. Click on your organization avatar (top-left corner)

3. Select Settings

4. Navigate to Security & access in the left sidebar

5. Under Personal API Keys click New API Key

6. Give your key a name (e.g., MCP Linear Integration)

7. Copy the generated API token and store it securely — you won't be able to see it again

Installing via add-mcp (Recommended)

add-mcp installs the server into Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, VS Code, Claude Desktop, and many other MCP-aware agents with a single command:

npx add-mcp @tacticlaunch/mcp-linear --env LINEAR_API_TOKEN=YOUR_LINEAR_API_TOKEN

Add -g to install globally instead of into the current project. See the add-mcp docs for the full agent list and flags.

Manual configuration

Add the following to your MCP settings file:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "linear": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@tacticlaunch/mcp-linear"],
      "env": {
        "LINEAR_API_TOKEN": ""
      }
    }
  }
}

Client-specific configuration locations

• Cursor: ~/.cursor/mcp.json
• Claude Desktop: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
• Claude VSCode Extension: ~/Library/Application Support/Code/User/globalStorage/saoudrizwan.claude-dev/settings/cline_mcp_settings.json
• GoMCP: ~/.config/gomcp/config.yaml

Manual run

Prerequisites:

• Node.js (v18+)
• NPM or Yarn
• Linear API token

# Install globally
npm install -g @tacticlaunch/mcp-linear

# Or clone and install locally
git clone https://github.com/tacticlaunch/mcp-linear.git
cd mcp-linear
npm install
npm link  # Makes the package available globally

Running the server

Run the server with your Linear API token:

mcp-linear --token YOUR_LINEAR_API_TOKEN

Or set the token in your environment and run without arguments:

export LINEAR_API_TOKEN=YOUR_LINEAR_API_TOKEN
mcp-linear

Validation

The default validation path is:

npm test
npm run build

npm test runs Jest unit tests and an official MCP SDK smoke test against the built stdio server, covering tool, resource, and prompt registration plus host-compatible schema emission.

Development

See [DEVELOPMENT.md](./DEVELOPMENT.md) for local development details.

Links

tacticlaunch/cursor-memory-bank — If you are a developer seeking to enhance your workflow with Cursor, consider giving it a try.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License — see the [LICENSE](./LICENSE) file for details.