René's URL Explorer Experiment

{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"DiscussionForumPosting","headline":"`add_issue_comment`, `update_issue`, and `get_issue` reject valid integer `issue_number`","articleBody":"### Summary\n\nThree endpoints that take `issue_number` as a required parameter consistently fail when invoked with an integer, even though the tool schema declares `issue_number` as `number`. Other endpoints on the same server that take integer parameters work correctly, and the failure survives reconnecting the MCP server.\n\n### Affected tools\n- `add_issue_comment`\n- `update_issue`\n- `get_issue`\n\n### Unaffected tools (for comparison, same session, same repo, same auth)\n- `create_issue` — succeeds (does not take `issue_number`)\n- `list_issues`, `search_issues` — succeed\n- `create_branch`, `create_or_update_file`, `push_files`, `create_pull_request` — all succeed, including calls with integer fields like `milestone`\n\n### Reproduction\n\n1. Any repo the caller can write issues on.\n2. Call, e.g.:\n   ```json\n   {\n     \"tool\": \"add_issue_comment\",\n     \"arguments\": {\n       \"owner\": \"\u003cowner\u003e\",\n       \"repo\": \"\u003crepo\u003e\",\n       \"issue_number\": 11,\n       \"body\": \"test\"\n     }\n   }\n   ```\n3. Call fails. Retrying multiple times, including after fully reconnecting the MCP server, reproduces the failure.\n4. `create_issue` against the same repo in the same session succeeds, ruling out auth, permissions, and rate limiting.\n5. Reproduced across at least two independent sessions on the same day.\n\n### Expected\nComment is posted / issue is updated / issue is fetched, matching a direct REST call to `POST /repos/{owner}/{repo}/issues/{issue_number}/comments` (etc.).\n\n### Actual\nCall is rejected before it reaches GitHub. The failure pattern is consistent with `issue_number` being serialised as a string somewhere in the request pipeline and then rejected by the server's own integer validation.\n\n[TODO fill in with error string on next occurrence]\n\n### Hypothesis\n\nThe three broken endpoints are exactly the ones where `issue_number` is templated into a URL path segment (`/repos/{owner}/{repo}/issues/{issue_number}[/comments]`), whereas the working endpoints pass their integers in the request body or query string. Likely culprits:\n\n- A path-parameter substitution step stringifies the value before an internal validator runs.\n- A schema-validation layer runs *after* path substitution and sees a string where a `number` is required.\n\nAnywhere `issue_number` is interpolated into a URL is worth checking first.\n\n### Affected version\n- MCP server: GitHub MCP http server\n- Transport: stdio.\n- Client: custom provider\n\n[Please run ` docker run -i --rm ghcr.io/github/github-mcp-server ./github-mcp-server --version` and paste the output below](https://github.com/github/github-mcp-server/pkgs/container/github-mcp-server/993100275?tag=sha256-27bf6a6927e2a9b0d3c96e6689f6dd6dcd0cd801e59d1916f2c324703b84e1da.sig)\n### Workaround\nNone from the client side; the caller cannot influence how the server serialises the parameter. Affected users have to fall back to the GitHub REST API directly or edit the issue in the web UI.\n","author":{"url":"https://github.com/chriszhang08","@type":"Person","name":"chriszhang08"},"datePublished":"2026-07-02T23:59:51.000Z","interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":"https://schema.org/CommentAction","userInteractionCount":1},"url":"https://github.com/2807/github-mcp-server/issues/2807"}