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

[图片] 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 用户拥有精细权限却无法读取 about.json | Discourse MCP

支持

supermathie (Michael Brown) 2026 年4 月 21 日 15:06 9

我已经合并了该更改，因此一旦它通过测试，你就可以重新构建并拉取更新后的版本，一切应该就能正常工作了。

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Request ESR backport: Allow granular API keys access to about.json Development mcp	1	47	2026 年7 月 27 日
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User API keys specification Integrations rest-api , reference	69	36729	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
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API 用户拥有精细权限却无法读取 about.json | Discourse MCP

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