MCP Server – Overview & Use Cases
Explore how the LinearB MCP server lets you query engineering data using natural language. Build custom reports, benchmark teams, and surface insights without navigating dashboards
To get started, see: Connect to LinearB MCP Server .
The LinearB MCP server enables external clients and IDE assistants to securely access your LinearB data. Using MCP (Model Context Protocol), you can query metrics, pull request data, and engineering insights directly from supported tools.
This includes access to delivery, quality, throughput, DevEx, DORA metrics, and custom data—allowing teams to explore insights, automate workflows, and integrate LinearB into their development environments.
Summary
- Use the MCP server to ask natural-language questions and generate reports from LinearB metrics.
- Explore persona-based use cases for leaders, managers, and executives.
- Start quickly using prebuilt prompts for releases, urgent PRs, lead time, and merge rate reporting.
- Use MCP tools to query metrics, repositories, contributors, releases, incidents, services, users, teams, branches, pull requests, issues, and project management entities.
- Always verify outputs in the LinearB Dashboard before using results for decisions or publishing.
Before you begin
What to know
- The MCP server is a Beta feature. Behavior and outputs may change before GA.
- Because results are generated through natural language, responses may be incomplete or inaccurate in edge cases.
Engineering leaders: Benchmark and scale best practices across teams
As a leader, you need more than a performance snapshot. You also need context. Scaling success across squads requires visibility into the practices that drive excellence and inefficiencies that are holding you back.
With the MCP server, you can benchmark performance, identify what enables top contributors, and replicate those strategies across the organization.
Applications
- Benchmark delivery, quality, and throughput metrics across teams to spot strengths and gaps.
- Identify best practices from top contributors and scale them across the org.
- Track consistency to detect workflows or repositories that lag consistently, signaling systematic inefficiencies.
- Align internal metrics with industry benchmarks.
Team leads and managers: Coach with confidence
Coaching isn’t about instincts; it’s about data-driven insights that make growth conversations meaningful. You need to know where individuals excel and where targeted support matters.
LinearB’s MCP server surfaces contributor-level patterns in productivity, quality, and collaboration. With proper context, you can guide one-on-one conversations and drive continuous improvement.
Applications
- Spot productivity patterns around coding frequency or time allocation, and drill into specifics.
- Surface quality insights by tracking review participation and the balance of new code vs. rework.
- Reveal efficiency gaps by breaking down coding, reviewing, and deployment times.
- Provide actionable feedback using precise data to move coaching from subjective to evidence-based.
Executives: Create and curate custom reporting
Executives and cross-functional partners often want answers, not dashboards. The LinearB MCP server makes engineering data accessible by letting you ask questions in natural language to generate tailored reports instantly.
Applications
- Deliver metrics that matter most, from merge rate to lead time, to empower executives with usable data.
- Run on-demand queries (for example, “Show me cycle time trends for the frontend repo over the last six months”).
- Filter flexibly by teams, contributors, repositories, and timeframes.
Getting started
These use cases only scratch the surface. With the MCP server, you can turn raw engineering activity into actionable insight. Interactive reports, custom benchmarks, and predictive insights help you scale best practices, coach confidently, and communicate engineering value.
To help you get started, the MCP server includes prebuilt prompts you can use and customize:
- Fetch PRs for release
- Create an urgent PR report for a team
- Create a lead time report for a team
- Create a merge rate report for a team
Tools available via the LinearB MCP server
The LinearB MCP server exposes tools that let you interact with your organization’s data through Claude or other MCP-compatible clients. Each tool maps to a LinearB data domain, enabling natural-language queries, filtering, and reporting.
Tool |
Description |
get_metrics | Retrieve engineering metrics with filtering and aggregation. |
get_metrics_benchmarks | Retrieve benchmark data for supported engineering metrics. |
get_ai_dev_tools | List supported AI development tools available in your LinearB environment. |
get_repository_id_by_name | Look up a repository ID by repository name. |
search_contributors | Search contributors and return contributor details. |
get_releases | Retrieve release information and tracking data. |
search_incidents | Search incidents and return incident details. |
get_services | List services and service-related information. |
search_users | Search users and return user profile details. |
search_teams_or_groups | Search teams or groups by name. |
get_teams | Retrieve team information and team details. |
search_branches | Search branches and return branch information. |
search_pull_requests | Search pull requests and return PR data. |
get_issues | Retrieve issue tracking data and issue details. |
calculate_lead_time | Calculate lead time for work across selected filters. |
get_pm_entities | Retrieve project management entities such as epics, features, and initiatives. |
Accuracy and best practices
The MCP server provides dynamic access to LinearB’s data through natural language. However, as with any generative AI system, it may occasionally return inaccurate or incomplete results.
To ensure accuracy, always verify numbers and metrics in the LinearB Dashboard before making key decisions or publishing derived reports.
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