jira-integration

Jira Integration Skill

Retrieve, analyze, and update Jira tickets directly from your AI coding workflow. Supports both MCP-based (recommended) and direct REST API approaches.

When to Activate

• Fetching a Jira ticket to understand requirements
• Extracting testable acceptance criteria from a ticket
• Adding progress comments to a Jira issue
• Transitioning a ticket status (To Do → In Progress → Done)
• Linking merge requests or branches to a Jira issue
• Searching for issues by JQL query

Prerequisites

Option A: MCP Server (Recommended)

Install the mcp-atlassian MCP server. This exposes Jira tools directly to your AI agent.

Requirements:

• Python 3.10+
• uvx (from uv), installed via your package manager or the official uv installation documentation

Add to your MCP config (e.g., ~/.claude.json → mcpServers):

{
  "jira": {
    "command": "uvx",
    "args": ["mcp-atlassian==0.21.0"],
    "env": {
      "JIRA_URL": "https://YOUR_ORG.atlassian.net",
      "JIRA_EMAIL": "[email protected]",
      "JIRA_API_TOKEN": "your-api-token"
    },
    "description": "Jira issue tracking — search, create, update, comment, transition"
  }
}

Security: Never hardcode secrets. Prefer setting JIRA_URL, JIRA_EMAIL, and JIRA_API_TOKEN in your system environment (or a secrets manager). Only use the MCP env block for local, uncommitted config files.

To get a Jira API token:

1. Go to https://id.atlassian.com/manage-profile/security/api-tokens
2. Click Create API token
3. Copy the token — store it in your environment, never in source code

Option B: Direct REST API

If MCP is not available, use the Jira REST API v3 directly via curl or a helper script.

Required environment variables:

Variable	Description
JIRA_URL	Your Jira instance URL (e.g., https://yourorg.atlassian.net)
JIRA_EMAIL	Your Atlassian account email
JIRA_API_TOKEN	API token from id.atlassian.com