keen

Keen

The complete Atlassian platform CLI and MCP Server.

---

1,843 API endpoints across Jira, Confluence, Agile, Marketplace, Service Desk, Assets, Compass, Bitbucket and Admin — in a single Go binary. SQLite-backed local sync with full-text search. MCP server for AI agents. Built for automation first, humans second.

What is Keen?

Every Atlassian workflow you automate is a wall of curl calls with hand-rolled JSON payloads and fragile jq parsing. Every AI agent that touches Jira hits rate limits after a few dozen operations.

Keen replaces all of that with typed commands, structured output, local SQLite caching with FTS5 full-text search, and an MCP server that gives AI agents fast, uncapped access to your entire Atlassian stack.

Free and open source. Apache-2.0 license. No account required. No telemetry.

API Coverage

Your First 5 Minutes

# 1. Install (macOS or Linux with Homebrew; see Install for .deb, .rpm and Docker)

brew install imogenlabs/tap/keen

2. Save your credentials

mkdir -p ~/.config/keen cat > ~/.config/keen/auth.json <<'JSON' { "base_url": "https://yoursite.atlassian.net", "username": "you@example.com", "password": "your-api-token" } JSON chmod 600 ~/.config/keen/auth.json

3. Check connectivity

keen doctor

4. Sync your Jira data locally

keen sync

5. Search instantly (no API calls)

keen search "authentication bug" --data-source local

Generate an API token at id.atlassian.com/manage-profile/security/api-tokens.

Environment variables work too, and override the file:

export JIRA_CLOUD_PLATFORM_USERNAME="you@example.com"

export JIRA_CLOUD_PLATFORM_PASSWORD="your-api-token" export JIRA_CLOUD_PLATFORM_URL="https://yoursite.atlassian.net"

Install

Homebrew (macOS and Linux)

brew install imogenlabs/tap/keen

This installs both keen and keen-mcp. brew upgrade keen picks up new releases; the formula follows each release within a day.

Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, RHEL

Each release has .deb and .rpm packages for x86_64 (amd64) and arm64. They install keen and keen-mcp in /usr/bin.

# Debian, Ubuntu

curl -LO https://github.com/imogenlabs/keen/releases/latest/download/keen_linux_amd64.deb sudo apt install ./keen_linux_amd64.deb

Fedora, RHEL

curl -LO https://github.com/imogenlabs/keen/releases/latest/download/keen_linux_amd64.rpm sudo dnf install ./keen_linux_amd64.rpm

On arm64, use keen_linux_arm64.deb or keen_linux_arm64.rpm. To upgrade, install the new release's package the same way.

Docker

The image is on GitHub's registry and Docker Hub, for amd64 and arm64: ghcr.io/imogenlabs/keen or smashingtags/keen. It runs keen-mcp by default. To run the CLI, put keen and its arguments after the image name:

docker run --rm \

-e JIRA_CLOUD_PLATFORM_URL=https://yoursite.atlassian.net \ -e JIRA_CLOUD_PLATFORM_USERNAME=you@example.com \ -e JIRA_CLOUD_PLATFORM_PASSWORD=your-api-token \ ghcr.io/imogenlabs/keen keen get PROJ-42 --agent

Add -v keen-data:/home/nonroot to keep keen sync's local copy between runs. To use it as an MCP server, see Docker under MCP Server.

Binary download

Download from GitHub Releases:

# macOS (Apple Silicon)

curl -L https://github.com/imogenlabs/keen/releases/latest/download/keen_darwin_arm64.tar.gz | tar xz sudo mv keen_darwin_arm64/keen /usr/local/bin/ sudo mv keen_darwin_arm64/keen-mcp /usr/local/bin/

macOS (Intel)

curl -L https://github.com/imogenlabs/keen/releases/latest/download/keen_darwin_amd64.tar.gz | tar xz sudo mv keen_darwin_amd64/keen /usr/local/bin/ sudo mv keen_darwin_amd64/keen-mcp /usr/local/bin/

Linux (x86_64)

curl -L https://github.com/imogenlabs/keen/releases/latest/download/keen_linux_amd64.tar.gz | tar xz sudo mv keen_linux_amd64/keen /usr/local/bin/ sudo mv keen_linux_amd64/keen-mcp /usr/local/bin/

Linux (arm64)

curl -L https://github.com/imogenlabs/keen/releases/latest/download/keen_linux_arm64.tar.gz | tar xz sudo mv keen_linux_arm64/keen /usr/local/bin/ sudo mv keen_linux_arm64/keen-mcp /usr/local/bin/

Each release also publishes checksums.txt.

From source

git clone https://github.com/imogenlabs/keen.git

cd keen make build-all # builds bin/keen and bin/keen-mcp

Requires Go 1.26.10 or newer.

What changed in each release: CHANGELOG.md.

MCP Server

Keen includes an MCP server (keen-mcp) that gives AI agents every keen command (1,939 tools). Works with Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, and any MCP-compatible host.

It offers two tools: keen_search finds the tools for a task ("transition an issue", "list sprints on a board") and returns them with their parameters, and keen_run runs one by name. Listing all 1,939 tools one by one would take about half a million tokens, more than most models can hold, so an app connecting to keen would fill up before doing any work. To get the full list anyway, set KEEN_MCP_TOOLS=all in the server's environment.

Tool calls arrive as JSON-RPC over stdio. Finding a tool happens inside keen-mcp with no call to Atlassian. Running one goes to Atlassian, except that a read repeated within 5 minutes is answered from keen's cache, so a busy agent stays under Atlassian's rate limits. Any successful write clears the cache, so a read after a write is fresh. Set KEEN_MCP_CACHE=off to make every read live. If a tool's API has been switched off by Atlassian, the result says what to use instead.

Source: docs/diagrams/mcp-flow.drawio.

Claude Desktop, and the MCP registry

On a Mac, download keen-mcp.mcpb from the latest release and open it: Claude Desktop installs keen and asks for your Atlassian site, email and API token. keen is also listed in the official MCP registry as io.github.imogenlabs/keen, updated with every release.

keen-mcp finds credentials the same way the CLI does: environment variables first, then ~/.config/keen/auth.json or config.toml. If you already set up the CLI, claude mcp add --transport stdio keen -- keen-mcp is enough. To pass them explicitly instead:

Claude Code

claude mcp add --transport stdio keen \

--env JIRA_CLOUD_PLATFORM_USERNAME=you@example.com \ --env JIRA_CLOUD_PLATFORM_PASSWORD=your-api-token \ --env JIRA_CLOUD_PLATFORM_URL=https://yoursite.atlassian.net \ -- keen-mcp

Cursor

Add to .cursor/mcp.json:

{

"mcpServers": { "keen": { "command": "keen-mcp", "env": { "JIRA_CLOUD_PLATFORM_USERNAME": "you@example.com", "JIRA_CLOUD_PLATFORM_PASSWORD": "your-api-token", "JIRA_CLOUD_PLATFORM_URL": "https://yoursite.atlassian.net" } } } }

Windsurf

Add to ~/.codeium/windsurf/mcp_config.json with the same structure.

Docker

Any MCP host can run keen-mcp from the image instead of installing it. The -e NAME flags pass the values from env into the container:

{

"mcpServers": { "keen": { "command": "docker", "args": ["run", "-i", "--rm", "-e", "JIRA_CLOUD_PLATFORM_URL", "-e", "JIRA_CLOUD_PLATFORM_USERNAME", "-e", "JIRA_CLOUD_PLATFORM_PASSWORD", "ghcr.io/imogenlabs/keen"], "env": { "JIRA_CLOUD_PLATFORM_URL": "https://yoursite.atlassian.net", "JIRA_CLOUD_PLATFORM_USERNAME": "you@example.com", "JIRA_CLOUD_PLATFORM_PASSWORD": "your-api-token" } } } }

Local Sync & Offline Search

Keen syncs your Atlassian data to a local SQLite database with FTS5 full-text search. Queries run in under 100ms against the local cache instead of hitting the Jira Cloud API.

keen sync                                          # hydrate local cache

keen search "sprint bug" --data-source local # FTS search (sub-100ms) keen analytics # analytics on synced data keen stale --days 30 # find stale items keen orphans # find orphaned items keen load # workload distribution

This is especially useful for AI agents that need to make many queries without hitting Atlassian's rate limits.

Agent Mode

Every command supports --agent which sets JSON output, no interactive prompts, compact format, and no color in one flag. Designed for AI agent consumption.

keen agile get-all-boards --agent

keen issue transitions get PROJ-42 --agent | jq '.results.transitions[] | {id, name}'

The everyday Jira calls have short forms:

keen find-issues --