Guided creation flows

Four flows that create something in GitLab by asking the user for each field through MCP elicitation, then for a final confirmation, before any request reaches GitLab: an issue, a merge request, a project and a release. Cancelling any prompt creates nothing. They are for a person in the loop; a script or a model that already has every field calls issue.create, merge_request.create, project.create or release.create instead.

Sample questions

• “Walk me through creating an issue in project 42”
• “Help me open a merge request step by step”
• “Guide me through publishing a release for v2.0.0”

How to call it

• Dynamic, the default surface: call gitlab_execute_action with action set to the action’s ID, such as interactive.issue_create, and its parameters in params. gitlab_find_action finds an ID from a description of the task.
• Meta and individual (GITLAB_MCP_TOOL_SURFACE=meta or individual): each action is a tool of its own, such as gitlab_interactive_issue_create, under the same name on both surfaces, with its parameters as the arguments.

Availability

Every tier serves the whole group, on self-managed instances and on GitLab.com alike.

Needs a client that supports MCP elicitation, which each action asks its questions through.

Read-only actions: 0 of 4, the ones a deployment in read-only mode keeps.

Actions

The description of each action, and of each of its parameters, is the text the server serves for it on the default surface, quoted as served.

Action	Individual
interactive.issue_create	gitlab_interactive_issue_create
interactive.mr_create	gitlab_interactive_mr_create
interactive.project_create	gitlab_interactive_project_create
interactive.release_create	gitlab_interactive_release_create

interactive.issue_create

Create a GitLab issue through step-by-step prompts, with explicit confirmation before calling the GitLab API. Canceling at any prompt aborts without creating the issue.

Input: project_id (numeric ID or URL-encoded path) selects the target project. Prompted fields are title, description, labels, confidential, and confirm. Requires permission to create issues in that project.

After invocation, the tool elicits in order:

• title (string, required): issue title.
• description (string, optional, multi-line, Markdown): leave empty to skip.
• labels (string, optional): comma-separated. Trimmed and deduped server-side.
• confidential (boolean, optional): yes/no confirmation. Defaults to public when declined.
• confirm (boolean, required): final yes/no review of the assembled summary.

Behavior: canceling at any prompt aborts with no GitLab API call and no side effects. Declining an optional prompt continues with that field unset. Each confirmed invocation creates ONE new issue. NON-idempotent: re-running with the same title/fields creates another issue. Side effects on success: GitLab fires issue-created webhooks and may notify issue subscribers.

When to use: human-in-the-loop issue creation. NOT for: scripted/programmatic creation. Use issue.create with all fields pre-supplied.

Requires the MCP client to support the elicitation capability. If unsupported, returns a structured error naming issue.create as the alternative.

Returns: JSON with the created issue (id, issue_iid, web_url, title, state). issue_iid corresponds to GitLab’s iid field.

See also: issue.create, issue.get.

• Meta-tool: gitlab_interactive_issue_create, a tool of its own
• Individual tool: gitlab_interactive_issue_create
• Tier: Free
• Behavior: writes, not idempotent

Parameter	Type	Mandatory	Description
project_id	string/integer	no	Project ID or URL-encoded path where the issue will be created

interactive.mr_create

Create a GitLab merge request through step-by-step prompts, with explicit confirmation before calling the GitLab API. Canceling at any prompt aborts without creating the MR.

Input: project_id (numeric ID or URL-encoded path) selects the target project. Prompted fields are source_branch, target_branch, title, description, labels, remove_source_branch, squash, and confirm. Requires permission to create merge requests in that project.

After invocation, the tool elicits in order:

• source_branch (string, required): branch with the changes to merge.
• target_branch (string, required): branch to merge into (e.g. main, develop).
• title (string, required): MR title.
• description (string, optional, multi-line, Markdown): leave empty to skip.
• labels (string, optional): comma-separated. Trimmed and deduped server-side.
• remove_source_branch (boolean, optional): yes/no confirmation, default unset.
• squash (boolean, optional): yes/no confirmation, default unset.
• confirm (boolean, required): final yes/no review of the assembled summary.

Behavior: canceling at any prompt aborts with no GitLab API call and no side effects. Declining an optional prompt continues with that field unset. Each confirmed invocation creates ONE new merge request. NON-idempotent: GitLab rejects an already-open MR for the same source_branch to target_branch in the same project as a validation failure (HTTP 422). Retries may fail with 422 instead of returning the existing MR. Confirm branch/MR state before re-running. For scripted idempotent workflows, use merge_request.create with all fields pre-supplied and handle 422 as the expected duplicate case.

When to use: human-in-the-loop MR creation. NOT for: scripted/programmatic creation. Use merge_request.create with all fields pre-supplied.

Requires the MCP client to support the elicitation capability. If unsupported, returns a structured error naming merge_request.create as the alternative.

Returns: JSON with the created MR (id, merge_request_iid, web_url, title, source_branch, target_branch, state). merge_request_iid corresponds to GitLab’s iid field.

See also: merge_request.create, branch.create.

• Meta-tool: gitlab_interactive_mr_create, a tool of its own
• Individual tool: gitlab_interactive_mr_create
• Tier: Free
• Behavior: writes, not idempotent

Parameter	Type	Mandatory	Description
project_id	string/integer	no	Project ID or URL-encoded path where the MR will be created

interactive.project_create

Create a GitLab project through step-by-step prompts, with explicit confirmation before calling the GitLab API. Canceling at any prompt aborts without creating the project. Declining an optional prompt continues with that field unset, except initialize_with_readme, where a decline continues with false.

Input: no fields. Every project detail is elicited. Requires permission to create projects for the authenticated user.

After invocation, the tool elicits in order:

• name (string, required): project display name and (when path is omitted) URL slug.
• description (string, optional): leave empty to skip.
• visibility (enum, required): one of private, internal, public.
• initialize_with_readme (boolean, optional): yes/no confirmation. An explicit no or a decline continues with false. Canceling aborts the flow.
• default_branch (string, optional): leave empty to use the GitLab default (‘main’).
• confirm (boolean, required): final yes/no review of the assembled summary.

When to use: human-in-the-loop project creation. NOT for: scripted/programmatic creation. Use project.create with all fields pre-supplied.

Behavior: each successful invocation creates ONE new project after explicit user confirmation. NON-idempotent: re-running with the same project path/name can fail with 400/409. Canceling at any prompt aborts with no GitLab API call and no side effects. Declining an optional prompt continues, with initialize_with_readme taking a decline as false. Side effects on success: GitLab may initialize a repository and notify project members.

Requires the MCP client to support the elicitation capability. If unsupported, returns a structured error naming project.create as the alternative.

Returns: JSON with the created project (id, path_with_namespace, web_url, visibility, default_branch).

See also: project.get, group.get.

• Meta-tool: gitlab_interactive_project_create, a tool of its own
• Individual tool: gitlab_interactive_project_create
• Tier: Free
• Behavior: writes, not idempotent

No parameters.

interactive.release_create

Create a GitLab release through step-by-step prompts, with explicit confirmation before calling the GitLab API. Canceling or declining any prompt aborts without creating the release.

Input: project_id (numeric ID or URL-encoded path) selects the target project. Prompted fields are tag_name, name, description, and confirm. Requires permission to create releases in that project.

After invocation, the tool elicits in order:

• tag_name (string, required): must reference an existing tag in the project. Create it first via tag.create.
• name (string, optional): release title. Answer with an empty value to let GitLab name the release after the tag. Declining the prompt aborts.
• description (string, optional, multi-line, Markdown): release notes. Leave empty to skip.
• confirm (boolean, required): final yes/no review of the assembled summary.

When to use: human-in-the-loop release publishing. NOT for: CI/automated release creation. Use release.create with all fields pre-supplied.

Requires the MCP client to support the elicitation capability. If unsupported, returns a structured error naming release.create as the alternative.

Behavior: each successful invocation publishes ONE new release after explicit user confirmation. NON-idempotent: re-running with the same tag returns 409 (release already exists). Canceling or declining any prompt aborts with no GitLab API call and no side effects. This flow’s optional fields take an empty answer rather than a decline. Side effects on success: GitLab fires release-created webhooks and may notify release subscribers.

Returns: JSON with the created release (tag_name, name, description, web_url).

See also: release.create, tag.create.

• Meta-tool: gitlab_interactive_release_create, a tool of its own
• Individual tool: gitlab_interactive_release_create
• Tier: Free
• Behavior: writes, not idempotent

Parameter	Type	Mandatory	Description
project_id	string/integer	no	Project ID or URL-encoded path where the release will be created