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

[画像] 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ユーザーがgranular accessでabout.jsonを読み込めない | Discourse MCP

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supermathie (Michael Brown) 2026 年 4 月 21 日午後 3:06 9

変更をマージしましたので、テストがパスしたら再ビルドして更新されたバージョンを取得してください。これで問題なく動作するはずです。

トピック		返信	表示
Request ESR backport: Allow granular API keys access to about.json Development mcp	1	49	2026 年 7 月 27 日
Confirming API Access to Authoring Limit Site Settings Development rest-api	4	129	2026 年 7 月 25 日
User API keys specification Integrations rest-api , reference	69	36731	2025 年 9 月 22 日
Allow API use by regular users, not just admins Development rest-api	6	1438	2023 年 2 月 14 日
Access via Discourse API, key and/or user rejected Development rest-api	2	906	2023 年 12 月 1 日

APIユーザーがgranular accessでabout.jsonを読み込めない | Discourse MCP

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