play-console-mcp

MCP server for the Google Play Console that exposes the official Google Play Developer API and Play Developer Reporting API as tools for AI agents.

Its focus is managing user feedback and Android app releases — reading and replying to Play Store reviews, cutting a release from an uploaded bundle, editing release notes, promoting a build from beta to production, steering a staged rollout, editing the store listing, rolling out an app recovery action, and checking crash, ANR, memory and battery vitals before and after a release.

What it deliberately does not do: no app bundle (AAB/APK) uploads — upload those from CI or the Play Console and reference the resulting version codes here — no in-app product or subscription management, no user and permission management, and no Android device management (that is the unrelated Android Management API).

Deletes, image uploads and app recovery writes are opt-in. They are only registered when GOOGLE_PLAY_ALLOW_DESTRUCTIVE is set — see Configuration.

Install

claude mcp add play-console \
  -e GOOGLE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_KEY_PATH=/path/to/service-account.json \
  -e GOOGLE_PLAY_PACKAGE_NAME=com.example.app \
  -- npx -y @orellbuehler/play-console-mcp

The -e flags must come before the -- separator; anything after -- is passed to the server process instead of being read as configuration.

Getting a service account key

1. In the Google Cloud console, select or create a project and enable the Google Play Android Developer API.
2. Go to IAM & Admin → Service accounts → Create service account. You can skip the optional "grant access" steps — Play Console permissions are granted separately, not via Cloud IAM roles.
3. Open the new service account, go to the Keys tab, and choose Add key → Create new key → JSON. The file downloads once and cannot be retrieved again.
4. In the Google Play Console, go to Users and permissions → Invite new users and paste the service account's email address (name@project-id.iam.gserviceaccount.com) as if it were a person.
5. Select your app and grant at least:
   • View app information (required by every tool)
   • Reply to reviews (for reply_to_review)
   • Release to testing tracks and/or Production releases (for create_release, promote_release, update_rollout, halt_rollout, update_release_notes, create_track, update_testers, and the app recovery tools)
   • Edit store listing, pricing & distribution (for update_listing, update_app_details and the listing image tools)
6. Point GOOGLE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_KEY_PATH at the downloaded JSON file.

You no longer need to link your Play developer account to a Google Cloud project to use the API. Treat the JSON key like a password — it carries whatever permissions you granted, with no second factor in front of it. Keep it outside the repository and consider chmod 600.

Permission changes can take a few minutes to propagate. Until they do, calls fail with The caller does not have permission.

Configuration

Variable	Required	Description
GOOGLE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_KEY_PATH	one of	Path to the downloaded service account JSON key
GOOGLE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_KEY	one of	The service account JSON key inline, as a raw JSON string
GOOGLE_PLAY_PACKAGE_NAME	no	Default app package name, so tools can omit package_name
GOOGLE_PLAY_ALLOW_DESTRUCTIVE	no	Set to 1, true or yes to register the delete, image upload and recovery write tools

Usage with Claude Code

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "play-console": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@orellbuehler/play-console-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "GOOGLE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_KEY_PATH": "/path/to/service-account.json",
        "GOOGLE_PLAY_PACKAGE_NAME": "com.example.app"
      }
    }
  }
}

Example prompts

• "What are people complaining about in this week's Play Store reviews?"
• "Reply to the 1-star review from Ada apologising for the crash and saying a fix ships this week."
• "Which tracks have releases right now, and what version code is in production?"
• "Promote the current beta release to production as a 10% staged rollout."
• "Ship version code 415 to the internal track with release notes saying 'adds offline mode'."
• "Fix the typo in the German release notes on production without touching the rollout."
• "Show me the current English store listing and shorten the tagline to fit 80 characters."
• "The crash rate spiked — halt the production rollout."
• "Compare the crash rate for version code 415 against 414 over the last two weeks."
• "Show me the top crash issues by affected users and the stack trace for the worst one."
• "Anything anomalous in our vitals this week? Pull the timeline around whatever you find."

Tools

Reviews

Tool	Description
list_reviews	List recent reviews with rating, text, device, app version and any existing reply
get_review	Get a single review and its full comment thread by review ID
reply_to_review	Post or edit the public developer reply to a review (max 350 characters)

Releases

Tool	Description
list_tracks	List all tracks with their releases (version codes, status, rollout fraction, notes)
get_track	Get a single track and its releases
list_releases	List a track's releases with their review state, without opening an edit
create_release	Release explicit version codes on a track, with notes, rollout fraction and targeting
promote_release	Promote the active release of one track to another, optionally as a staged rollout
update_release_notes	Replace the "what's new" text of a track's active release, leaving the rollout alone
update_rollout	Change the staged rollout percentage, or complete it by passing user_fraction: 1
halt_rollout	Halt an in-progress staged rollout, keeping its current fraction
create_track	Create a custom closed testing track
get_country_availability	Get the countries a track is available in
get_testers	Get the Google Groups with access to a closed track
update_testers	Set the Google Groups with access to a closed track

Artifacts

Tool	Description
list_bundles	List uploaded app bundles with their version codes and hashes
list_apks	List uploaded APKs with their version codes and hashes
list_generated_apks	List the APKs Play generated from a bundle, grouped by signing key
get_expansion_file	Get the OBB expansion file attached to an APK version code (legacy APK-only)
list_device_tier_configs	List the app's device tier configs (device groups, tiers, country sets)
get_device_tier_config	Get one device tier config by id

Bundles and APKs are read-only here — upload them from CI or the Play Console, then pass the version codes to create_release.

Listings

Tool	Description	Opt-in
list_listings	List every localized store listing
get_listing	Get the store listing for one locale
update_listing	Update title, short/full description or promo video for one locale
get_app_details	Get contact email, phone, website and default language
update_app_details	Update contact details and default language
list_listing_images	List store images of one type for one locale, with their ids
upload_listing_image	Upload a PNG/JPEG screenshot, icon, feature graphic or TV banner	✅
delete_listing	Delete the store listing for one locale	✅
delete_all_listings	Delete every localized store listing	✅
delete_listing_image	Delete one store image by id	✅
delete_all_listing_images	Delete every image of one type for one locale	✅

Recovery

Tool	Description	Opt-in
list_recovery_actions	List app recovery actions targeting a version code, with their status
create_recovery_action	Create a draft remote in-app update for users on a broken release	✅
deploy_recovery_action	Deploy a draft recovery action to its targeted users	✅
add_recovery_targeting	Widen the targeting of an existing recovery action	✅
cancel_recovery_action	Cancel a recovery action	✅

Tools marked Opt-in are only registered when GOOGLE_PLAY_ALLOW_DESTRUCTIVE is set.

Every write tool that goes through the Play edits workflow accepts validate_only: true for a dry run — the change is validated against the API and then discarded instead of being committed. The app recovery tools are outside that workflow and have no dry run, which is why their writes are opt-in.

Vitals

Tool	Description
list_anomalies	List datapoints Google flagged as anomalous, with the slice and metric hit
get_vitals_freshness	Latest date available per metric set, so queries hit data that exists
query_crash_rate	Crash rate and user-perceived crash rate over time, optionally by dimension
query_anr_rate	ANR rate and user-perceived ANR rate over time
query_error_counts	Absolute error report counts and affected users, e.g. broken down by issue
query_lmk_rate	Low-memory-kill rate — stability failures that are not reported as crashes
query_slow_start_rate	Slow app starts, broken down by cold/warm/hot start type
query_slow_rendering_rate	Slow rendering against 20fps and 30fps targets (games only)
query_excessive_wakeup_rate	Users with more than 10 AlarmManager wakeups per hour (battery drain)
query_stuck_wakelock_rate	Users with a background wakelock held for over an hour (battery drain)
query_memory_usage	Anon RSS + swap memory usage percentiles
query_bitmap_memory_usage	Bitmap memory usage percentiles
search_error_issues	Grouped crash/ANR issues with cause, location, counts and Play Console link
search_error_reports	Individual error reports including the raw stack trace

Apps

Tool	Description
list_apps	List the apps this service account can access, with their package names
get_release_filter_options	Tracks and serving releases with their version codes, for vitals filters

Notes & caveats

• Reviews are limited by Google, not by this server. The API only returns reviews created or modified in the last 7 days, only reviews that contain written text, and only for production releases. Replies are capped at 350 characters and the user is only notified about the first reply to a review.
• Quotas: review reads are limited to roughly 200 requests/hour and replies to 2,000/day per developer account.
• Release and listing writes use the Play edits workflow. Each write tool opens an edit, applies the change, and commits it in a single call; failed calls delete the edit again. Promoting or creating a release replaces the destination track's release list, which is what the Play Console does too.
• Listing updates are partial, deletes are not. update_listing and update_app_details only change the fields you pass, but update_release_notes and update_testers replace the whole set — read the current value first and include everything you want to keep.
• Store listing limits are Google's: title 30 characters, short description 80, full description 4000, release notes 500 per locale, listing images 15 MB and PNG or JPEG only.
• App recovery actions are user-visible and have no dry run. deploy_recovery_action pushes a remote in-app update immediately; confirm the targeting with list_recovery_actions first.
• Vitals data lags. Android vitals metrics are aggregated daily in America/Los_Angeles and are typically about a day behind — get_vitals_freshness reports the latest date each metric set actually has. Slices with too few users are omitted by Google. Only crash rate, ANR rate and error counts support HOURLY aggregation; every other metric set is daily only.
• Ratings over time are not available through the Reporting API; per-review star ratings come from list_reviews.

Development

npm install
npm run build         # tsc -p tsconfig.build.json -> dist/
npm test              # vitest run
npm run lint          # eslint src
npm run typecheck     # tsc --noEmit
npm run format        # prettier --write .

Smoke-test the built server against a real app:

GOOGLE_SERVICE_ACCOUNT_KEY_PATH=/path/to/service-account.json \
GOOGLE_PLAY_PACKAGE_NAME=com.example.app \
npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector node dist/index.js

CI / Releasing

CI runs format:check, lint, typecheck, test and build on Node 20 and 22. Publishing happens on GitHub release via npm trusted publishing (OIDC, no tokens):

npm version patch
git push --follow-tags
gh release create "v$(node -p "require('./package.json').version")" --generate-notes

License

MIT © Orell Bühler