openshift-release-mcp

An MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that exposes tools for querying the OpenShift release API. It is built with FastMCP and httpx, and speaks streamable HTTP so clients can connect to a URL (for example from Cursor).

The default API base is https://amd64.ocp.releases.ci.openshift.org/api/v1.

Requirements

• Python 3.13+

Install (uv)

git clone https://github.com/openshift/ocp-release-mcp.git
cd ocp-release-mcp
uv venv
source .venv/bin/activate
uv pip install .

Configuration

Optional environment variables (or a .env file in the working directory):

Variable	Default	Purpose
BASE_URL	https://amd64.ocp.releases.ci.openshift.org/api/v1	OpenShift release API root
HOST	0.0.0.0	Bind address for the HTTP server
PORT	8000	Listen port
LOG_LEVEL	INFO	Logging level

Run

openshift-release-mcp

The server starts with streamable HTTP transport. By default it listens on http://0.0.0.0:8000; the MCP endpoint path is /mcp (for example http://localhost:8000/mcp).

Use with Cursor

Example .mcp.json in your project:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "openshift-release": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "http://localhost:8000/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Start openshift-release-mcp before connecting from the IDE.

MCP tools

Tool	Description
get_release	Fetches a release by stream and version tag. Returns structured data: version, phase, and updated images with commit subjects and PR URLs when the payload includes changeLogJson.
list_tags	Lists tags for a stream, optionally filtered by phase (passed as a query parameter to the API).
compare_releases	Compares two releases in the same stream: payload1 vs payload2 (base), using the API’s from= comparison.
get_rhcos_rpms	Lists all RPMs in the RHCOS build of a release payload.
compare_rhcos_rpms	Compares RHCOS RPM lists between two release payloads, showing added, removed, and updated packages.
get_component_rpms	Lists all RPMs installed in a specific component image of a release payload. Requires oc and podman on the server.
get_pull_request_info	Fetches the raw .patch text for a given pull request URL (appends .patch to the URL).

Concepts

• Release stream: A channel such as 4.22.0-0.nightly, 4-stable, 4-dev-preview, or 4.18.0-0.ci.
• Version / tag: A specific build identifier, for example 4.22.0-0.nightly-2026-03-23-022245.
• Component: A container image within a release payload, for example ovn-kubernetes, etcd, or kube-apiserver.

Stream naming conventions

Stream type	Example
Nightly	4.22.0-0.nightly
CI	4.18.0-0.ci
Dev Preview	4-dev-preview
Stable	4-stable

EC (engineering candidate) releases such as 4.22.0-ec.4 use the 4-dev-preview stream.

Examples

Below are examples of questions you can ask an LLM connected to this MCP server:

• "What is the OVN version in the ovn-kubernetes component in 4.22.0-ec.4?" Uses get_component_rpms to inspect the ovn-kubernetes image and filter for ovn RPMs.

• "What is the OVS version in the ovn-kubernetes component in 4.22.0-ec.4?" Uses get_component_rpms to inspect the ovn-kubernetes image and filter for openvswitch RPMs.

• "What is the etcd version in 4.22.0-ec.4?" Uses get_component_rpms to inspect the etcd image. Since etcd is a Go binary (not an RPM), the LLM can also run the etcd --version entrypoint on the image directly.

• "List the latest accepted nightly releases for 4.22" Uses list_tags with stream=4.22.0-0.nightly and phase=Accepted.

• "What changed between two nightly releases?" Uses compare_releases with the stream and two version tags to show updated images, commits, and component changes.

• "What RHCOS RPMs changed between two releases?" Uses compare_rhcos_rpms to diff the full RPM lists between two payloads, showing added, removed, and updated packages.

• "What RPMs are included in the RHCOS build for 4.22.0-0.nightly-2026-03-23-022245?" Uses get_rhcos_rpms with the stream and version tag.

License

See LICENSE in this repository.