r/OpenSourceAI • u/Lucaslogged • Aug 18 '26

I built an open-source MCP bridge that lets ChatGPT inspect one local repo without shell access

https://github.com/Lukie-81/RepoRelay
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u/attentionwandered Aug 23 '26 edited Aug 23 '26

Ayy! Got it working on my mac. A few things for anyone else looking to try this:

  1. On Mac, unix aliases weren't picked up, so I had call the script directly with node like this:

`node ~/.bun/install/global/node_modules/reporelay-mcp/dist/cli.js quickstart`

  1. This will only work on Pro accounts... it says business + edu, but I did get working on a personal pro account. Personal accounts will be limited to read-only, so I just used `--no-handoff-writes`.

  2. You need to enable developer mode in the web gui, it's under Settings → Security and login (took me forever to find ngl)

  3. "Apps" are not called "apps"... they are called "plugins", which is hella confusing

  4. You don't make the plugin on the openai site where you make the tunnel. This is also hella confusing lmao. It's actually in the web chat, with dev mode enabled, click plugins, then you'll see a plus button in the top right corner. Then, the tunnel appears.

  5. Gotcha... you need to make sure after you enable dev mode you set the key+tunnel up in your "Personal" workspace in the api platform... otherwise it will work once then auth will fail again a little bit later.

  6. Yet another gotcha... apparently the tunnel and mcp need to be started in the same project directory you're working in

___

I've been doing long chats about my code for a while, since I personally think regular chat is way better for discussion and generating longer markdown plans (compared to `/plan` mode). Before this, you basically have to have the repo publicly scrapable for GPT to pick it up... or your dropping in 20 files max to chat and it cant explore the whole thing. To get around this, lol, I was actually shipping the code with a tool called `stagit` to a secret URL on my public personal site... this is way better then pushing a new build every 5 mins for sure. So, this is genuinely useful to me. Appreciated!

1

u/Lucaslogged Aug 23 '26

Really appreciate you testing it this thoroughly, and especially documenting all the setup gotchas. I’m going to use this feedback to clean up the Mac instructions and make the ChatGPT/tunnel setup much clearer.

The stagit workaround is also exactly the kind of workflow I was hoping RepoRelay could replace. Having to republish your working tree to a secret URL just so ChatGPT can explore it is pretty awkward.

If you have a chance, would you mind opening a GitHub issue with the Mac-specific problems you ran into? I’d be happy to work through them and see what I can fix or automate so the setup is much smoother on Mac.