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Missing author_association field in list_issues and pull request responses

Open Beginner friendly
#2,250 1 comment 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Assessment

Difficulty
2/5
Estimated time
1-3 hours
Newbie friendliness
72/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Clearly specified
Activity status
Quiet
Tech stack
github, go, graphql
Domain
api

Research direction

Start by reading pkg/github/issues.go and pkg/github/minimal_types.go, focusing on IssueFragment, fragmentToMinimalIssue(), MinimalPullRequest, and convertToMinimalPullRequest(). Verify the list_issues GraphQL response and the list_pull_requests and pull_request_read REST responses; the work is done when each includes author_association with the available author association value.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Summary

The author_association field is missing from several MCP response types, which prevents downstream consumers from determining author permissions (e.g., OWNER, MEMBER, COLLABORATOR, CONTRIBUTOR, NONE).

Affected Endpoints

1. list_issues (GraphQL path)
  • IssueFragment struct does not request authorAssociation in the GraphQL query
  • fragmentToMinimalIssue() does not populate AuthorAssociation in MinimalIssue
  • Note: The REST path in convertToMinimalIssue() correctly sets AuthorAssociation: issue.GetAuthorAssociation()
2. list_pull_requests and pull_request_read (REST path)
  • MinimalPullRequest struct is missing the author_association field entirely
  • convertToMinimalPullRequest() does not set it
  • The raw *github.PullRequest from the go-github library has AuthorAssociation available via pr.GetAuthorAssociation()
Already Working
  • issue_read (single issue GET) — uses REST convertToMinimalIssue() which includes author_association
  • get_review_commentsMinimalPullRequestReview includes author_association

Impact

Consumers that rely on author_association to determine author trust level (OWNER, MEMBER, COLLABORATOR, CONTRIBUTOR, NONE) cannot make correct decisions when this field is missing from list_issues and pull request responses.

For example, a repo admin's issues are incorrectly treated as untrusted because their author_association of "MEMBER" is not present in the response.

Suggested Fix

For list_issues (GraphQL):
  1. Add AuthorAssociation githubv4.String to IssueFragment struct in issues.go
  2. Set AuthorAssociation: string(fragment.AuthorAssociation) in fragmentToMinimalIssue() in minimal_types.go
For pull requests (REST):
  1. Add AuthorAssociation string \x60json:"author_association,omitempty"\x60 to MinimalPullRequest struct in minimal_types.go
  2. Set AuthorAssociation: pr.GetAuthorAssociation() in convertToMinimalPullRequest() in minimal_types.go

References

  • pkg/github/issues.goIssueFragment struct
  • pkg/github/minimal_types.goMinimalIssue, MinimalPullRequest, fragmentToMinimalIssue(), convertToMinimalPullRequest()
Dominant language
Go
Stars
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Forks
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Avg merge
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Merged PRs (30d)
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Contributor guide

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First steps

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  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

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