Access Token Expiry Not Triggering Refresh in Atlassian MCP Server

[amirejaz]

After the access token expires, the Atlassian MCP server fails to refresh it using the refresh_token. Instead, it continues to send API requests with the expired access_token, resulting in 401 Unauthorized responses from the upstream service.

Current Behavior

• The server successfully authenticates and receives a valid access_token and refresh_token.
• Once the access token reaches its expiry (as per the Expiry field in the token struct), subsequent API calls return 401 Unauthorized.
• No refresh request appears to be made using the refresh_token.

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Expected Behavior

When the access token expires, the MCP server should automatically use the refresh_token to obtain a new access_token and retry the failed request seamlessly.

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Steps to Reproduce

1. Start the Atlassian MCP server and authenticate successfully.
2. Allow 1 hour to pass (or force token expiry).
3. Observe API calls made by the MCP server to Atlassian APIs.
4. After expiry, responses become 401 Unauthorized.
5. No refresh request is observed in logs or network traces.

[Joc007]

I can confirm I am experiencing this issue while using the Atlassian MCP server with the Gemini CLI. In addition to the 401 Unauthorized errors, I am also seeing ETIMEDOUT errors, which I believe are a consequence of the expired token.

This issue requires frequent manual re-authentication and disrupts the workflow. Looking forward to a fix.

ℹ Refreshing expired token for MCP server: atlassian-rovo-mcp-server
✖ Failed to refresh token: Token refresh failed: 400 - {"error":"invalid_grant","error_description":"Grant not found"} 
ℹ Authenticated via "oauth-personal".
✖ Error during discovery for server 'atlassian-rovo-mcp-server': 401 error received for SSE server 'atlassian-rovo-mcp-server' without OAuth configuration. Please authenticate using: /mcp auth atlassian-rovo-mcp-server