Detect the tier without an administrator token, where GitLab allows it (#899) - #900
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Closes #899. Automatic detection read GET /license and nothing else. That endpoint is admin-only on self-managed and unavailable to anyone on GitLab.com, and every other case fell back to Free: a non-admin token on an Ultimate instance was served the Free catalog, and every GitLab.com account was, whatever it was paying for. Nothing said so. It now asks a second question where the first is refused. GET /namespaces carries a plan per namespace the caller administers, and any token may read it. Measured against a licensed EE 19.3.1 and against gitlab.com on 2026-09-22: a non-admin token is refused /license with 403 on both; /namespaces reports the real plan on gitlab.com and "default" on self-managed for admin and non-admin alike, because a subscription is a gitlab.com concept. So the second question rescues the gitlab.com population and rescues nobody on self-managed, which is the honest extent of it. Several paid namespaces resolve to the highest, on the asymmetry ADR-0018 records for scopes: a tier resolved too low silently removes tools and the caller cannot tell a missing capability from a withheld one, while one resolved too high surfaces as GitLab's own refusal on the call that needed it. A gitlab.com account with a Free personal namespace working in an Ultimate group is the case. Driving it against the real gitlab.com found a defect in the first version of this: "default" and "free" both map to Free and mean opposite things. "free" is gitlab.com answering, "default" is self-managed not answering, and reading them alike warned every gitlab.com account on the free plan at every startup about a tier that was correct. namespacePlanAnswers separates them, and the live probe now logs the tier with no warning. Where neither question answers, the tier is Free as before, and the fallback stops being silent: an enterprise build warns once naming the setting that settles it, a CE build stays quiet because Free is the truth there. That is what /version buys, and it is all it buys: enterprise says EE rather than CE and cannot separate Premium from Ultimate. The explicit tier still skips all of it, in both transports, which was already true and is now documented alongside what detection can and cannot do.
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📝 SummarySummary by CodeRabbit
WalkthroughThe change updates tier detection to use instance license data, paged namespace plans, and explicit fallback behavior. Tests cover the cascade. Documentation and generated project statistics reflect the change. ChangesTier detection cascade
Priority: ➖ Normal Estimated code review effort: 3 (Moderate) | ~25 minutes Change: Bug fix · Severity of issue fixed: Medium Sequence Diagram(s)sequenceDiagram
participant Client
participant License
participant Namespaces
participant Logger
Client->>License: Request instance license
License-->>Client: Plan or access error
Client->>Namespaces: Request paged namespace plans when needed
Namespaces-->>Client: Namespace plans and continuation
Client->>Logger: Log fallback warning when enterprise tier remains unresolved
Merge Risk: 🔵 Low · up to The tier cascade can still be merged with bounded risk, but the namespace fixtures should reject non-GET requests so the intended read-only API behavior remains protected. 🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 4 | ❌ 1❌ Failed checks (1 warning)
✅ Passed checks (4 passed)
Full details: Out of Scope Changes checkExplanation The tier implementation, tests, fixtures, and tier-related documentation support [ ✨ Finishing Touches 💡 1📝 Generate docstrings
🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)
🛠️ Fix failing CI checks 💡
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The namespace-plan step this branch adds is a workaround for GitLab exposing the instance plan to administrators alone. That gap is now raised upstream as gitlab-org/gitlab#630305, with a merge request adding a plan field to the instance metadata every authenticated caller already reads. Row 53 records it on the register's own terms, including the measurement against a licensed EE 19.3.1 and gitlab.com that says why the namespace step helps on one deployment and not the other.
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Inline comments:
In `@CLAUDE.md`:
- Line 530: Update the HTTP --tier descriptions at the documented locations to
match the current GITLAB_MCP_TIER behavior: describe namespace-based fallback
detection in addition to instance-license detection, preserve the
unanswered-plan handling and free fallback, and mention the enterprise-only
warning when neither source resolves the tier.
In `@docs/development/upstream-bugs.md`:
- Around line 197-200: Update the instance metadata entry for MR !256936 to
describe the change as proposed: replace the “What was contributed” heading and
“already served” wording with proposed-language indicating the plan field would
be served and would report the stated values.
In `@docs/reference/configuration.md`:
- Line 64: Update the namespace-based tier detection documentation to state that
it examines at most 100 namespaces and may miss paid namespaces beyond that
limit, leaving the resolved tier lower than the actual tier. Apply this wording
to docs/reference/configuration.md line 64, docs/reference/env.md line 67, and
CLAUDE.md line 530; all three sites require the same documentation change.
In `@internal/gitlab/client_test.go`:
- Line 1775: Update the httptest server handler before the r.URL.Path switch to
reject any request whose r.Method is not http.MethodGet by returning
http.StatusMethodNotAllowed; preserve the existing path-based fixture dispatch
for GET requests.
In `@internal/gitlab/client.go`:
- Around line 533-576: Update tierFromNamespaces to paginate through every
result page using the GitLab pagination mechanism before evaluating namespace
plans, rather than scanning only the first page. Preserve the existing
filtering, highest-tier selection, logging, and error fallback behavior while
adapting the ListNamespaces call to the pagination callback.
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CLAUDE.mdREADME.mddocs/development/upstream-bugs.mddocs/reference/configuration.mddocs/reference/env.mdinternal/gitlab/client.gointernal/gitlab/client_test.go
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The register entry wrote gitlab_subscription for what GitLab holds per namespace, and the documentation gate reads any gitlab_ token as a tool name this server should register. It names none, so check-doc-tool-names failed and took the coverage, cross-platform and aggregate jobs with it. Naming the concept is also the better sentence: a reader of this register wants to know that a subscription is per namespace, not what the table storing it is called.
The namespace probe read one page of a hundred and judged what it got, so a caller whose only paid namespace sat past the hundredth resolved Free with nothing saying why. It pages now, under two bounds that keep that from costing anything on the common path: it stops at the first ultimate, since no later namespace can raise the answer, and it stops after ten pages either way, because an account may administer thousands and refining a tier is not worth walking all of them. A page that fails after an earlier one answered keeps that answer, since the tier found so far is a fact. The remaining bound is now documented where a reader meets the setting, in the environment and configuration references and in CLAUDE.md, and the two HTTP --tier entries no longer describe instance-license detection as the whole of it. The register entry described the metadata field as contributed and already served. The merge request is open, so it says proposed. The tier cascade fixture refuses a method other than GET: every endpoint the cascade asks is a read, and a probe that started sending a write would have passed unnoticed.
TestLocalPath_HTTPRefusesEveryCallerSuppliedPath asserts that a call refused for naming a local path over HTTP reaches GitLab with nothing, and measures that as the requests seen across the call. Resolving the tier is per pool entry and so happens during the first call through the server, and this branch gives it a second step, so the first subtest counted the namespace listing as a request its own refusal had leaked. One throwaway call before the loop settles the entry. The guarantee is unchanged: what the loop measures is now only what the refused call sent, which is what it always said it measured. The testing reference is regenerated for the specs this branch adds.
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The fixture already answers the pool's own probes without recording them, because they arrive lazily on the first request and would otherwise be charged to the first case. This branch gives the tier a second step, so the namespace listing belongs in that same list. The previous commit settled the pool entry with a throwaway call instead, which worked and was the wrong shape: it duplicated a call and ignored the mechanism the fixture already documents three lines above.
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Inline comments:
In `@internal/gitlab/client_test.go`:
- Line 1906: In both namespace pagination fixtures, add a method guard before
the URL path switch: require http.MethodGet, report unexpected methods with
t.Errorf, and return HTTP 405 otherwise. Apply this at
internal/gitlab/client_test.go lines 1906-1906 and 1992-1992; both sites require
the same direct change.
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The method guard went on the cascade fixture and not on the two pagination ones added beside it, so a request-method regression in the namespace probe would have been answered with the expected page and the tests would have passed. Both dispatch on the path alone, so both get the same guard. misspell refused licence in the transport fixture's comment.
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Closes #899.
Automatic detection read
GET /licenseand nothing else. That endpoint is admin-only on self-managed and unavailable to anyone on GitLab.com, and every other case fell back to Free: a non-admin token on an Ultimate instance was served the Free catalog, and every GitLab.com account was, whatever it was paying for. Nothing in the documentation said so.Measured, then built
A licensed EE 19.3.1 was brought up in Docker and a non-admin user created on it; GitLab.com was asked the same questions with an ordinary account.
/license200→ultimate403403/namespacesplan: defaultplan: defaultplanreal/versionenterprise: trueenterprise: trueenterprise: trueSo
GET /namespaces, which any token may read for the namespaces it administers, rescues the GitLab.com population and rescues nobody on self-managed: a subscription is a GitLab.com concept, so self-managed reportsdefaultfor everyone whatever the instance is licensed for. That is the honest extent of the fix, and the code says so.The cascade
GET /license, authoritative where readable.GET /namespaces, the highest paid plan among the namespaces the caller administers.The highest rather than the caller's own, on the asymmetry ADR-0018 records for token scopes: a tier resolved too low silently removes tools and the caller cannot tell a missing capability from a withheld one, while one resolved too high surfaces as GitLab's own refusal on the one call that needed it. A GitLab.com account with a Free personal namespace working in an Ultimate group is the case this exists for.
What driving it against the real GitLab.com caught
The first version treated
defaultandfreealike, since both map to Free. They mean opposite things:freeis GitLab.com answering the question,defaultis self-managed not answering it. Reading them alike warned every GitLab.com account on the free plan, at every startup, about a tier that was correct.namespacePlanAnswersseparates them; the live probe now logsdetected GitLab tier from the namespace plan tier=freewith no warning.This is the reason the issue asked for a measurement rather than a design: the defect was invisible in the unit tests and obvious on the first real call.
The fallback stops being silent
Where neither question answers, an enterprise build warns once naming the setting that settles it, and a CE build stays quiet because Free is the truth there. That is what
/versionbuys and all it buys:enterpriseseparates EE from CE and cannot separate Premium from Ultimate.Unchanged
GITLAB_MCP_TIERand--tierstill skip detection entirely, in both transports (main.go:1529for stdio,pool.go:1153for the pool). That was already true; it is now documented beside what detection can and cannot do, inenv.md,configuration.mdand CLAUDE.md, none of which mentioned the admin-only condition before.Every new function is at 100% statement coverage, and disabling the cascade fails the five cases that cover it.