mcp-timely

MCP server for Timely time tracking — built for asking questions, not wrapping endpoints. Three read-only tools, each answered in a single upstream call with Timely doing the aggregation server-side, so an LLM never pages through raw entries to sum hours (and never gets the sum wrong).

Tool	The question it answers
projects_overview	What's on my plate? — projects with client, logged hours, budget burn, unbilled amounts
time_spent	Where did my time go? — date-range rollups grouped by project, client, label, or day, with billable split
work_log	What did I actually do? — individual entries with notes for a range; standup/diary/invoicing material

Scope is deliberate: read-only, and always scoped to the authorized user. There are no write tools and no user/team parameters.

Setup

1. Create a Timely OAuth app at https://app.timelyapp.com/<account>/oauth_applications with callback URL urn:ietf:wg:oauth:2.0:oob.

2. Configure

   cp .env.example .env   # fill in TIMELY_CLIENT_ID and TIMELY_CLIENT_SECRET
   

3. Authorize (once)

   uv sync
   uv run mcp-timely auth
   

   Open the printed URL, authorize, paste the code. Tokens land in TIMELY_TOKEN_FILE (default timely_tokens.json) and refresh themselves from then on.

4. Add to Claude Code

   claude mcp add timely -- uv run --directory /path/to/mcp-timely mcp-timely
   

Token handling

Timely rotates refresh tokens on every refresh and its access tokens carry no expiry. The session layer uses the access token until a 401, then refreshes once — persisting the new pair atomically before continuing — and retries the request once. The token file is the only state; keep it on a persistent volume in Docker. Re-authorization is only needed if the grant is revoked.

HTTP deployment

Set TRANSPORT=http and MCP_API_KEY (the server refuses to start unauthenticated HTTP). Serves streamable-http on /mcp, liveness on /health. See compose.yaml.

Development

uv run pytest        # unit tests (in-memory MCP client, no network)
uv run ruff check .

Releases

Every push to main that touches non-doc files releases automatically: tests and a security audit run, the patch version bumps, a vX.Y.Z tag lands, and a multi-arch image is published to ghcr.io/caseyro/mcp-timely. Consequences:

• Don't edit version in pyproject.toml by hand — CI owns it.
• Add [skip ci] to a commit message to skip a release.
• Rebase PRs on main before merging so the auto-bump commit doesn't race yours.
• Markdown-only and test-only changes don't trigger a release.

License

MIT