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 DEV: allow granular api keys access to about.json (#38948) main ← dev-about-api-scope merged 03:0…

[immagine] 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.

Utente API con accesso granulare non può leggere about.json | Discourse MCP

Supporto

supermathie (Michael Brown) 21 Aprile 2026, 3:06pm 9

Ho unito la modifica, quindi una volta che raggiungerà lo stato ‘test-passed’ potrai ricostruire e scaricare la versione aggiornata; tutto dovrebbe funzionare.

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Utente API con accesso granulare non può leggere about.json | Discourse MCP

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