jira-rest-mcp-server

A Model Context Protocol (MCP) server that provides Jira integration for Claude Code and other MCP-compatible clients. Interact with Jira issues, projects, and workflows directly from your AI assistant.

This server was created as an alternative to the official Atlassian MCP endpoint (https://mcp.atlassian.com/v1/sse). Some MCP clients, including Claude Code, experience authentication issues with the SSE-based endpoint where the connection can lose authentication state without the client detecting it, causing subsequent requests to fail silently or with confusing errors.

This REST-based implementation provides:

• Reliable authentication - Uses standard API token auth that doesn't lose state
• Bidirectional markdown/ADF conversion - Write in markdown, get responses in markdown
• Automatically converts markdown to Jira's ADF format when creating/updating issues
• Converts ADF responses back to markdown for easy reading (configurable)
• Supports headings, lists, bold, code blocks, tables, and more
• Predictable behavior - Each request is independent, avoiding stateful connection issues

1. Go to https://id.atlassian.com/manage-profile/security/api-tokens
2. Click Create API token
3. Give it a label (e.g., "MCP Server") and copy the token

Choose your client below:

<details> <summary><b>Claude Code (CLI)</b></summary>

This keeps secrets out of your committed codebase.

Add to .claude/settings.json in your project:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "jira": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "jira-rest-mcp-server"],
      "env": {
        "JIRA_BASE_URL": "${JIRA_BASE_URL}",
        "JIRA_EMAIL": "${JIRA_EMAIL}",
        "JIRA_API_TOKEN": "${JIRA_API_TOKEN}"
      }
    }
  }
}

Add your credentials to .claude/settings.local.json (add this file to .gitignore):