push_files creates a new server-side commit and may not preserve local commit SHA/author metadata

[Sogl]

Describe the bug

push_files creates a new server-side commit with a different SHA than an already existing local git commit containing the same changes, and the resulting remote commit may also use different author / committer metadata.

This may be the intended implementation, but it is not clear from the current tool description / README, and it was surprising in a workflow where a local commit had already been created before using push_files.

Affected version

Hosted remote GitHub MCP server

Observed serverInfo.version:
github-mcp-server/remote-57ddf9ca0de2f61fc022ca3cff21efc81a65fc99

I could not map this remote build identifier to a public OSS release tag such as v0.32.0 or v0.33.0.

Steps to reproduce the behavior

1. Create a local git commit in an existing repository.
2. Use push_files to publish the same file changes to the same branch on GitHub.
3. Inspect the resulting commit on GitHub.
4. Compare the remote commit SHA and author / committer metadata with the local git commit.

Expected vs actual behavior

Expected:

• either the docs clearly explain that push_files creates a new server-side commit from file contents and does not preserve a pre-existing local commit SHA / metadata,
• or the tool provides a way to preserve / control commit identity when that matters.

Actual:

• push_files is described very generically as “Push files to repository”
• the resulting commit on GitHub gets a different SHA from the local commit
• the resulting author / committer metadata may differ from the local git commit metadata

Logs

Relevant observation from the resulting remote commit:

• a new commit SHA was created on GitHub instead of reusing the local commit SHA
• the remote commit author / committer metadata differed from the local git commit metadata

I can provide a concrete before/after example if needed.

[SamMorrowDrums]

Thanks for the report @Sogl, this is expected behaviour, using the API https://docs.github.com/en/rest/repos/contents?apiVersion=2022-11-28#create-or-update-file-contents.

As the GitHub MCP server does not get involved with local git operations (the remote server physically cannot access local files to do so even if we wanted to), there is no other way to enable uploading files to repos.

So I can understand how this might be confusing, but there is no viable alternative. I hope that answers you sufficiently.

[Sogl]

Thanks, that makes sense. The current README/tool description does not explicitly say that push_files creates a new GitHub-side commit rather than preserving an existing local commit SHA/metadata, so documenting that would help.