Developer Builds Open-Source Tool to Limit AI Coding Agents to Read-Only Repo Access

A developer has released an open-source project called RepoRelay, designed to restrict AI coding agents to a minimal, read-only set of repository operations rather than granting them broad shell or filesystem access. The tool functions as an MCP server sitting between an AI client and a local codebase, exposing only specific operations like listing and reading files within an approved repository. The motivation stems from the security principle of least privilege — giving a system only the permissions required for its specific task. RepoRelay enforces containment at the server level, blocking path-traversal attacks and preventing access to sensitive files such as .env or credential files. The developer argues that separating code-review capability from machine-level access makes AI agent security boundaries far easier to reason about and audit.