Summary

Discovery, not archaeology.

It deliberately omits blame, PR history and version diffs — that is what `git` and `gh` are for — and spends the saved surface on the find-and-evaluate loop instead. The design choices show: seven tools rather than thirty, markdown responses rather than JSON dumps, and every response ending with a suggested next step so the agent chains rather than re-reasons. Rate limits are tracked per bucket, Search at 30 requests per minute and Core at 5,000 per hour, with automatic backoff when either runs out.

What it is

Seven read-only tools built around one workflow: find a candidate, evaluate it, then read how people actually use it. Repository search takes several phrasings in one call and ranks on literal relevance rather than raw popularity; repo browsing, file reads and symbol lookup all run against remote GitHub with no local checkout.

What you get

`search_repos` — discovery by topic, stars, language, recency or trending, accepting multiple query phrasings in one call
`search_packages` — direct PyPI or npm lookup returning version, description, links and the GitHub repo URL
`repo_tree` — a remote repo's file layout with depth and glob filters
`get_file` — any file at any branch, tag or commit
`find_symbol` — goto-definition through real AST queries, so a class or function is found where it is declared rather than wherever the string appears
`list_tags` — tags and recent releases, the fastest is-this-maintained check
`search_code` — full-text search across every public file on GitHub, with `repo:`, `language:`, `path:`, boolean operators and regex

Requirements

A GitHub token — without one the unauthenticated ceiling is 60 requests per hour and you will hit it immediately. It is picked up automatically from `GH_TOKEN`, `GITHUB_TOKEN`, `GITHUB_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN`, or from `gh auth token` if the GitHub CLI is already logged in, so users of `gh` configure nothing. Public repo read access is enough; no scopes need selecting. Python 3.11+ and uv. The package is `fossick-mcp` (0.1.4 in pyproject and server.json), run over stdio with `uvx fossick-mcp`. MIT licensed.

Setup effort

One command plus a key — uvx fossick-mcp, then supply credentials

Fossick