Unable to read the contents of a file, but can write and edit when used in ChatGPT.

[vedtam]

Describe the bug

After configuring and successfully connecting the github-mcp-server to my ChatGPT account, I can:

• List my repositories
• List files within a repository
• Create new files
• Modify existing files

However, I cannot retrieve the contents of an existing file. Any attempt to get a file’s contents from the MCP only returns some metadata without the actual text content, though other GitHub operations work as expected:

{"text":"successfully downloaded text file (SHA: 7dab38d7c52ab273abe930b4619dc1e1dc1118c4)"}

Affected version

• latest.

[2fst4u]

Thank god I thought I was going insane not getting this to work. This is also an issue in open-webui (which I suspect is irrelevant but just to clear up that it's not just in chatgpt).

[ikai104]

I believe the problem is in here:

github-mcp-server/pkg/github/repositories.go

Lines 771 to 782 in c1f8d4c

	if isTextContent {
	result := &mcp.ResourceContents{
	URI: resourceURI,
	Text: string(body),
	MIMEType: contentType,
	}
	// Include SHA in the result metadata
	if fileSHA != "" {
	return utils.NewToolResultResource(fmt.Sprintf("successfully downloaded text file (SHA: %s)", fileSHA)+successNote, result), nil, nil
	}
	return utils.NewToolResultResource("successfully downloaded text file"+successNote, result), nil, nil
	}

and here:

github-mcp-server/pkg/utils/result.go

Lines 37 to 49 in c1f8d4c

	func NewToolResultResource(message string, contents *mcp.ResourceContents) *mcp.CallToolResult {
	return &mcp.CallToolResult{
	Content: []mcp.Content{
	&mcp.TextContent{
	Text: message,
	},
	&mcp.EmbeddedResource{
	Resource: contents,
	},
	},
	IsError: false,
	}
	}

Basically NewToolResultResource(message, contents) function always treat contents as EmbeddedResource even in isTextContent case. So downstream cannot recognize this data chunk is a text properly (maybe is a binary). If downstream don't know how to process it, it may be striped out.

I don't familiar golang and this codebase, could someone help to submit a fix?

[SamMorrowDrums]

@ikai104 is correct, embedding resource responses is part of the protocol, it's a shame significant clients haven't supported it in all this time.

I have some ideas about how to work around the limitation. The experience is much better in clients that support it because it shows up as an actual file.

Pure text responses are not really designed for file delivery, especially binary file delivery.

[Manni79]

If I understand correctly, this “bug” is the reason why ChatGPT apps still won’t work with GitHub MCP as of March 2026 (I tested it today and hat the same issue), when you configure the GPT-App for GitHub MCP and use it to read MD and other files. That’s really a shame, and if I’m not mistaken, OpenAI should actually fix this, since the files retrieved via get_file_contents are actually correct, but they’re returned as download attachments rather than as text. It would still be great if someone would take the initiative to fix this. Other issues also show (anomalyco/opencode#6604, anomalyco/opencode#7878) that other tools are having problems with this as well. Perhaps text files should be returned as text and not just as a download. Thanks a lot for a change.

[SamMorrowDrums]

@Manni79 I am in two minds about this, I did start adding a compatability mode flag, and could look at finishing that, but the reason why Resources are returned from the tool call and explicitly not just plain text is because of context management.

An MCP client should be able to retrieve full file content and do additional processing such as save to a temp file and let models grep over it or run it through a RAG pipeline and let models semantically search the content etc. making the only option for the host to shove the whole thing in the context is a poor alternative.

To me that feels like such a regression and client application developers have had about a year to implement this so I am sorely disappointed to see so much lack of protocol support in major clients.