We’ve been setting up the Discourse MCP server to connect our Discourse instance to Claude Desktop via config files. When using a single-use API key with granular access controls, the MCP server throws a 403 Forbidden error because it can’t read about.json. Snippet from the Console Logs [2026-03-1…

it seems reasonable to include access to about.json, I’ve opened a PR and will run this by the team https://github.com/discourse/discourse/pull/38948

[Bild] aangi: The API username or key is invalid Also, is this a misleading error we can improve?

Hi Michael, it does seem like a misleading error. However, because we cannot change the scope of the user once its been created, it is possible that in case of granular access, the API username is being rendered invalid because there is no about.json file.

Hi @awesomerobot @supermathie any update on this?

I’ve merged the change, so once it hits tests-passed you can rebuild and pull in the updated version and everything should work.

API-Benutzer mit granularem Zugriff kann about.json nicht lesen | Discourse MCP

Unterstützung

supermathie (Michael Brown) 21. April 2026 um 15:06 9

Ich habe die Änderung zusammengeführt. Sobald der Status ‘tests-passed’ erreicht ist, kannst du neu bauen und die aktualisierte Version beziehen. Dann sollte alles funktionieren.

Thema		Antworten	Aufrufe
User API keys specification Integrations rest-api , reference	69	35905	22. September 2025
Allow API use by regular users, not just admins Development rest-api	6	1375	14. Februar 2023
Access via Discourse API, key and/or user rejected Development rest-api	2	878	1. Dezember 2023
Get an API key's scopes and user level via the API Development rest-api	0	622	16. November 2023
403 error when connecting Zapier to Discourse Support	13	927	25. September 2020

API-Benutzer mit granularem Zugriff kann about.json nicht lesen | Discourse MCP

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