Turning on read-only mode will make Claude unable to retrieve any board data

[Dahuan-Ou]

Hello Monday MCP team !

Thanks for developing this fantastic MCP tool for Monday.com, works really well. However have noted an issue with the read-only mode.

If we set the read-only mode to true in config.json file ), most tools will be removed from Claude, only 5 tools are left available.

What I have observed from testing is, with read-only mode, Claude is unable to fetch any actual data columns -- except 4 fields, 'item id', 'item name', 'group id', and 'group name', since it's not able to retrieve any useful data from the monday board, the read-only mode is not really usable.
So the current behavior of the read-only mode (removing the tools) doesn't seem to be the right solution, it should not have removed the tools but it should just prevent any changes/update to be actually executed.

The rationale and strong interest of a true 'read-only' mode is to prevent AI from changing/updating the data proactively without confirming with the user. Sometimes AI assumes that user wants a change and proactively makes the change when the user was only asking for an advice.

Pic 1 -
After turning on read-only mode, only below 5 tools are available, and Claude is unable to fetch any actual data columns except 'item id' and 'item name'.

Pic 2 -
Claude says it can fetch item names and item IDs, but not any other data columns.

Pic 3 -
Claude can confirm the column names on the board but just not able to fetch any data from the columns.

[damian-rakus]

Hello @Dahuan-Ou , thank you for opening the issue. I'd just have 2 questions

1. Are you running your own MCP client (based on Complete Installation Guide section of README.md) or hosted version?
2. If running own MCP client, can you check if you are using newest version? With read-only mode running (tested in Cursor) - I can see more than 5 tools including the get_board_items_page that should return data columns

[Dahuan-Ou]

Hello @Dahuan-Ou , thank you for opening the issue. I'd just have 2 questions

1. Are you running your own MCP client (based on Complete Installation Guide section of README.md) or hosted version?
2. If running own MCP client, can you check if you are using newest version? With read-only mode running (tested in Cursor) - I can see more than 5 tools including the get_board_items_page that should return data columns

Hello @damian-rakus

Thank you for looking into this issue.

1. Yes, we are running our own MCP client (Claude Desktop) based on the complete installation guide. Not the hosted version.
2. We use the 'npx' in the config file, since we use 'npx' to run the server, so it always automatically fetch the latest version of MCP, correct? Here's our config file.

3. The issue that we have in read-only mode is, it can retrieve the column name, but can not retrieve any actual column value of the items.

4. I accidentally closed this issue, could you please re-open it?

[damian-rakus]

@Dahuan-Ou

Ad.1. Got it, thank you for providing the context.

Ad.2 + Ad.3. It seems like npx command downloads the package once and then re-uses it. In order to force usage of live version we can add @latest to the command npx @mondaydotcomorg/monday-api-mcp@latest - I have updated relevant documentation sections.

Because of the package caching above, seems like you were using old MCP version with the tool that has been removed. Once you update the command to include @latest you should have access to our up-to-date version that has 'Get Board Items Page' tool - it is able to fetch column values. Other than that you should see 15 tools from my previous screenshot in read-only mode so you should be able to enjoy wider set of capabilities :)

Ad.4. I've reopened the issue. I hope that steps above should resolve the problem. If yes, please close the issue later. If it did not help, let me know.