tram-mcp 0.5.0

MCP server exposing TestRail API endpoints as tools for LLMs

TestRail MCP Server

Connect your AI coding assistant to TestRail — manage test cases, runs, results, and more directly from VS Code, Cursor, Claude Desktop, or Claude Code. Built on the Model Context Protocol and powered by testrail_api_module.

Features

• Dynamic tool discovery — endpoints are introspected from testrail_api_module at startup, so new API coverage is picked up automatically
• LLM-friendly — instead of registering hundreds of tools, provides a category-based discovery pattern so models can explore available operations without being overwhelmed

Requirements

• Python 3.11+
• uv

Installation

Step 1 — Install tram-mcp once

uv tool install tram-mcp

This puts a tram-mcp binary on your PATH (typically ~/.local/bin/tram-mcp on macOS/Linux, %APPDATA%\Python\Scripts\tram-mcp.exe on Windows).

tram-mcp then auto-updates itself: on launch (at most once per day) it spawns a detached uv tool upgrade tram-mcp in the background. The current process keeps running on the existing binary; the upgrade lands on the next launch. Set TRAM_MCP_NO_AUTO_UPDATE=1 to disable, or run uv tool upgrade tram-mcp manually anytime.

Why this and not uvx tram-mcp? uvx re-resolves and re-extracts wheels on every launch. On Windows this races with Defender / OneDrive scanning the uv cache and intermittently fails with Access is denied. (os error -2147024891) — the server starts, then exits before it can respond. Even on a healthy machine, a cold uvx cache costs ~4 s+ and can exceed an MCP client's startup timeout. Installing once removes both problems.

Step 2 — Configure your MCP client

Claude Desktop

Add to your Claude Desktop config file:

• macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json
• Windows: %APPDATA%\Claude\claude_desktop_config.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "testrail": {
      "command": "tram-mcp",
      "env": {
        "TESTRAIL_URL": "https://yourinstance.testrail.io",
        "TESTRAIL_USERNAME": "[e-mail]",
        "TESTRAIL_API_KEY": "your-api-key"
      }
    }
  }
}

Claude Code

claude mcp add testrail \
  -e TESTRAIL_URL=https://yourinstance.testrail.io \
  -e TESTRAIL_USERNAME=[e-mail] \
  -e TESTRAIL_API_KEY=your-api-key \
  -- tram-mcp

VS Code / VS Code Insiders

Create .vscode/mcp.json in your project (or add to your User Settings):

{
  "servers": {
    "testrail": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "tram-mcp",
      "env": {
        "TESTRAIL_URL": "",
        "TESTRAIL_USERNAME": "",
        "TESTRAIL_API_KEY": ""
      }
    }
  }
}

VS Code supports ${input:variableName} placeholders to prompt for values at startup.

Cursor

Create .cursor/mcp.json in your project (or ~/.cursor/mcp.json globally):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "testrail": {
      "command": "tram-mcp",
      "env": {
        "TESTRAIL_URL": "https://yourinstance.testrail.io",
        "TESTRAIL_USERNAME": "[e-mail]",
        "TESTRAIL_API_KEY": "your-api-key"
      }
    }
  }
}

Alternative — no-install via uvx

If you prefer not to maintain a separate install, you can use uvx tram-mcp as the command (with "args": ["tram-mcp"]) — Cursor / VS Code / etc. style. This re-resolves on each launch, so a cold cache pays a noticeable ~4 s cost that can intermittently exceed MCP client startup timeouts. The launch-time auto-update (see above) also no-ops in this mode — uvx already pulls fresh on each invocation.

Not recommended on Windows. uvx's per-launch wheel extraction races Windows Defender real-time scanning and OneDrive sync over the uv cache, producing intermittent Failed to install: <wheel>. Caused by: Access is denied. (os error -2147024891) errors and "server failed to start" behavior that retries fix. Use the uv tool install path above instead.

Configuration

The server requires TestRail credentials via environment variables:

Variable	Required	Description
TESTRAIL_URL	Yes	Your TestRail instance URL (e.g. https://example.testrail.io)
TESTRAIL_USERNAME	Yes	TestRail username or email
TESTRAIL_API_KEY	Yes*	TestRail API key
TESTRAIL_PASSWORD	Yes*	TestRail password (alternative to API key)

*Either TESTRAIL_API_KEY or TESTRAIL_PASSWORD must be set. API key is recommended.

Development

# Install dependencies
uv sync

# Run the server locally
uv run tram_mcp

# Run tests
uv run pytest

# Run a single test
uv run pytest path/to/test.py::test_name -v

Releasing

Merging a PR to main automatically tags the version and publishes to PyPI. You must bump the version before merging:

uv version 0.6.0  # update version in pyproject.toml

Also bump manifest.json's version to match — both files must agree, and the .mcpb upload is rejected when the version isn't incremented. If you forget to bump, the PyPI publish is skipped (the existing version tag already exists on PyPI).

License

MIT