Hosted search_issues silently returns incorrect keyword results

Author: zgqqCreated Aug 31, 2026Updated Sep 12, 2026
Labelsbug

Bug description

The hosted GitHub MCP search_issues tool silently returns materially incorrect keyword search results while reporting incomplete_results: false.

This reproduces when calling the hosted endpoint directly, without an MCP aggregator.

Environment

  • Endpoint: https://api.githubcopilot.com/mcp
  • Server: github-mcp-server
  • Reported version: github-mcp-server/remote-34ac9c16f8fd3e2a5af74929de89de3a11e98f9b
  • Protocol negotiated: 2025-11-25
  • Date verified: 2026-08-31

Reproduction

Call search_issues with ordinary GitHub issue search syntax already scoped to issues.

Query Hosted MCP total_count GitHub REST GET /search/issues
repo:modelcontextprotocol/python-sdk transport 0 410
repo:modelcontextprotocol/python-sdk windows 0 95
repo:anthropics/claude-code hooks 3 8016
memory leak 40 407744 at verification time

The three returned hooks results were titled plugins, trap, and Hook before Exit, which also does not match normal GitHub full-text search behavior.

Passing owner and repo separately with a keyword-only query produced the same incorrect results, so this is not limited to embedding repo: in query.

Qualifier-only searches such as repo:modelcontextprotocol/python-sdk label:bug return plausible counts, which makes the keyword failure easy for an agent to trust silently.

Expected behavior

search_issues should preserve GitHub issue search semantics and return counts/results consistent with the GitHub REST Search API for the same effective query, or return an explicit error/unsupported-query signal.

Actual behavior

The tool returns a successful response with incomplete_results: false, but keyword matches are missing or unrelated.

Impact

Agents can incorrectly conclude that an issue, bug report, or prior discussion does not exist. This is a correctness failure rather than only a ranking-quality difference.

Source: github/github-mcp-server