io.github.michaelrice/zendesk-mcp

zendesk-mcp

A Model Context Protocol server that exposes Zendesk ticket read and write tools to Claude Code and other MCP clients.

What it does

• Search, list (paginated), and fetch Zendesk tickets, comments, and attachments
• Create new tickets and update existing ticket fields (including group, custom status, and tags)
• Post public replies and internal notes
• Set ticket status and assign tickets to agents
• Browse and apply views and macros
• Look up users, groups, organizations, and custom statuses
• Read and write time-tracking entries
• Format a ticket as a Markdown issue draft for handoff to a tracker (GitLab, GitHub, Jira)
• Two MCP prompts (analyze-ticket, draft-ticket-response) for ticket analysis and response drafting
• (Optional) Expose Zendesk Help Center articles as an MCP resource
• (Optional) Read linked GitLab issues / MRs / commits via the Git-Zen Zendesk app

Prerequisites

• Python 3.10 or newer
• A Zendesk OAuth client. A Zendesk admin can create one at:

https://<your-subdomain>.zendesk.com/admin/apps-integrations/apis/zendesk-api/oauth_clients

Set the redirect URL to http://localhost:8787/callback and request scopes read write.

Install

Install into a project-local virtualenv. Using a venv keeps zendesk-mcp and its dependencies isolated from your system Python and from other projects, and is the recommended path for everything below.

From a clone of this repository:

python3 -m venv .venv
.venv/bin/pip install --upgrade pip
.venv/bin/pip install -e .

For development (also installs pytest):

.venv/bin/pip install -e ".[dev]"

> Throughout this README, commands use the venv's binaries via .venv/bin/.... You can instead source .venv/bin/activate once per shell and drop the prefix — the result is the same.

OAuth setup

Run the interactive setup using the venv's Python:

.venv/bin/python -m zendesk_mcp setup

You will be prompted for:

1. Your Zendesk subdomain (e.g. acme for acme.zendesk.com)
2. The OAuth client ID created by your admin
3. The OAuth client secret
4. (Optional) A Git-Zen integration field ID — see [Optional: Git-Zen integration](#optional-git-zen-integration)
5. (Optional) Whether to enable the Help Center knowledge base resource — see [Optional: Help Center knowledge base](#optional-help-center-knowledge-base)

The setup opens a browser for the OAuth authorization step, then writes a token to ~/.config/zendesk-mcp/config.json (mode 0600).

If you have no browser, the URL is printed to the terminal — open it on any device, click Allow, and paste the resulting redirect URL back into the prompt.

Token expiry and refresh

Zendesk access tokens expire. OAuth clients created on or after 2026-04-30 get a

30-minute default lifetime; older clients issue non-expiring tokens unless an expiry is

requested. Setup requests a 24-hour access token and a 90-day refresh token so the

behaviour is the same either way, and the server renews the access token automatically —

before it expires, and again if Zendesk rejects a token mid-request.

To make that possible, the config file also stores refresh_token, expires_at,

client_id, and client_secret alongside the access token. Keep the file at mode 0600;

it is the same trust level as the access token itself. If your OAuth client returns no

refresh token, setup says so and the token is used as-is.

Re-run .venv/bin/python -m zendesk_mcp setup when:

• the refresh token expires (90 days with no use), or
• you revoke the OAuth grant in Zendesk.

In either case the tools return Zendesk authorization failed: ... Re-run: zendesk-mcp setup

rather than failing opaquely.

Register with Claude Code

Register the MCP server using the venv's Python by absolute path. Claude Code launches the server in a fresh shell that does not inherit your activated venv, so the absolute path is required — pointing at a bare python here will fail to import zendesk_mcp.

ZENDESK_MCP_DIR="$(pwd)"   # run this from the repo root, after install
claude mcp add --scope user zendesk -- "$ZENDESK_MCP_DIR/.venv/bin/python" -m zendesk_mcp

Or just inline the absolute path you want:

claude mcp add --scope user zendesk -- /absolute/path/to/zendesk-mcp/.venv/bin/python -m zendesk_mcp

Then add the read tools to permissions.allow in ~/.claude/settings.json to avoid per-call prompts:

{
  "permissions": {
    "allow": [
      "mcp__zendesk__zendesk_get_ticket",
      "mcp__zendesk__zendesk_get_tickets",
      "mcp__zendesk__zendesk_get_comments",
      "mcp__zendesk__zendesk_list_attachments",
      "mcp__zendesk__zendesk_download_attachment",
      "mcp__zendesk__zendesk_search_tickets",
      "mcp__zendesk__zendesk_ticket_to_gitlab_context",
      "mcp__zendesk__zendesk_list_views",
      "mcp__zendesk__zendesk_get_view",
      "mcp__zendesk__zendesk_get_view_tickets",
      "mcp__zendesk__zendesk_list_macros",
      "mcp__zendesk__zendesk_preview_macro",
      "mcp__zendesk__zendesk_search_users",
      "mcp__zendesk__zendesk_get_groups",
      "mcp__zendesk__zendesk_get_group_users",
      "mcp__zendesk__zendesk_get_organization",
      "mcp__zendesk__zendesk_list_custom_statuses"
    ]
  }
}

Write tools (zendesk_post_comment, zendesk_post_internal_note, zendesk_set_ticket_status, zendesk_assign_ticket, zendesk_create_ticket, zendesk_update_ticket, zendesk_log_time, zendesk_add_tag, zendesk_remove_tag, zendesk_apply_macro) are intentionally not in the default allow-list — Claude will prompt you per call.

Restricting tools

Every tool is enabled by default. To narrow what a deployment can do, for example where

ticket text is written by customers and the agent should not be able to reply to them, set

either of these in ~/.config/zendesk-mcp/config.json or in the server's environment. Values

from both are combined.

A disabled tool is never registered, so the model cannot see or call it. Names that match no

tool are reported on stderr.

Tools

Tickets

Tools that return ticket records include channel, the channel the ticket arrived on (Zendesk's via.channel: web, email, api, ...), or null when Zendesk does not say. zendesk_get_ticket also returns custom_fields as a list of {id, value} pairs; a field that is not set on the ticket has a null value.

Tags

Views & Macros

Users, Groups & Organizations

Time tracking

Git-Zen integration

Prompts

The server exposes two MCP prompts that some clients (e.g. Claude Desktop) surface as slash commands:

Optional: Git-Zen integration

If your Zendesk instance uses the Git-Zen app, the zendesk_get_git_zen_links tool can read its custom-field payload. Find your instance's Git-Zen custom field ID under Admin → Tickets → Fields (it is a numeric ID), then either set it during .venv/bin/python -m zendesk_mcp setup or edit ~/.config/zendesk-mcp/config.json to add:

{
  "git_zen_field_id": 12345678901234
}

Without this configured, zendesk_get_git_zen_links returns a "not configured" message.

Optional: Help Center knowledge base

If your Zendesk instance has a published Help Center, you can expose its sections and articles as the zendesk://knowledge-base MCP resource. The resource returns a single JSON document covering all sections and articles, cached for one hour.

This is opt-in. Enable it by either answering "y" to the prompt during .venv/bin/python -m zendesk_mcp setup, or by adding the following to ~/.config/zendesk-mcp/config.json:

{
  "knowledge_base_enabled": true
}

When the flag is absent or false, the resource is not registered, keeping the server's resource list empty for instances without a Help Center.

Optional: downloading attachments outside the cache

zendesk_download_attachment writes files to ~/.cache/zendesk-mcp/attachments/<ticket_id>/ by default (configurable via attachment_cache_dir). The dest_dir argument can redirect a download elsewhere, but because attachment contents are controlled by whoever wrote the ticket, the tool only accepts a dest_dir inside the cache or inside a directory you have explicitly allowed. Add the directories you want to permit to ~/.config/zendesk-mcp/config.json:

{
  "attachment_allowed_dest_dirs": ["/home/me/work/support_bundles"]
}

Paths are resolved before the check, so .. segments and symlinks cannot escape an allowed directory. Any dest_dir outside the allowed set is refused before the download starts.

The download URL itself must be an https URL on .zendesk.com for your configured subdomain; the tool refuses anything else so the OAuth token is never sent to another host. Archives are limited to 10,000 entries and 256 MiB unpacked, and tar members that are not regular files or directories are skipped.

Development

python3 -m venv .venv
.venv/bin/pip install -e ".[dev]"
.venv/bin/pytest

Tests run on Python 3.10, 3.11, and 3.12 in CI (see .github/workflows/test.yml).

Releasing

Bump the version in pyproject.toml, mcpb/pyproject.toml (both the version and

the zendesk-mcp== pin), mcpb/manifest.json, and server.json (both fields),

then push a v* tag. That triggers .github/workflows/release.yml, which publishes

to PyPI, packs the MCPB bundle, publishes server.json to the MCP Registry, and

cuts the GitHub release.

Check the versions agree before tagging — the release fails fast otherwise:

python3 .github/scripts/check_versions.py 0.1.5

License

[Apache-2.0](LICENSE)