Connecting Claude and Github (and why you should always be making notes!
Just a couple of weeks ago I spent an hour or so working out how to connect GitHub to the Claude app. Just doing it via the Claude app wasn’t working. Eventually I got it working. But this morning I am seeing this message:
I go to the Integrations configuration panel in the Claude app and click the Connect button and it doesn’t do anything. This is the same problem I had last time. And I can’t remember how I solve it!
This is why you should always make notes with everything you do. It saves loads of time in the long run being able to refer back to your notes. Just making the notes often helps you remember things.
So now I have to work out how to do it again. I have a vague recollection of contacting the technical support of a company recently, was that to do with this? I’ll check my emails. Nope, not this. Perhaps I asked an LLM about it and got an answer there, I’ll check that. Nope. I’ll do a Kagi search. Oooh I see some links I’ve clicked on before. Perhaps the answer is there.
There are two pages in the Anthropic support website about Github integration, but neither say how to make the connection!
https://support.anthropic.com/en/articles/10167454-using-the-github-integration https://support.anthropic.com/en/articles/10168395-setting-up-integrations-on-claude-ai
To use integrations on Claude.ai, you must authenticate through the third party first.
Well, thanks, that’s really useful . How do I do this authenticate through the third party thing? I guess I’m going to have to click around in the GitHub settings…
Oh I’ve found the page!
https://github.com/settings/installations
Curious, it looks like it is set up correctly already. I was expecting to see something like “Security token expired” or whatever but nope, it’s all correct. Buggerations. That means it’s something else. I made a small configuration change just so that I could click the button to save the configuration again — worked correctly.
Ok, so I just clicked the “Connect” button again in the Integrations panel of the Claude app and this time it worked correctly. So that’s both good (problem solved!) and annoying (the problem seems to be something random that can’t be fixed other than by just clicking around).
Ok well if this happens again this might solve it:
- Go to the installations panel in Github and make a small modification to the config, click save.
- Go to the Integration panel in Claude and try clicking the connect button for GitHub. Hopefully it will work.
But the main message of this huge waste of time is:
Just do it. Your future self will thank you.