REST/GraphQL endpoint to set a repository's social preview image

[Builder106]

🏷️ Discussion Type

Product Feedback

💬 Feature/Topic Area

API

Body

In 2026, setting a repository's social preview card (the 1200×630 image GitHub uses for link unfurls on Twitter/Slack/Discord and the repo card) still requires clicking through Settings → Social preview → Upload an image in the web UI. No REST endpoint, no GraphQL mutation. Discussion #32166 opened in September 2022 and has accumulated 13 upvotes since. Filing a refreshed ask because the use case has shifted meaningfully.

Why this matters in 2026

Three things changed since #32166 was filed:

1. Agentic release workflows. Tools like Claude Code now scaffold entire repos in one session — gh repo create, push initial commit, set topics, configure branch protection, generate banner + social card. Every other step has a clean API; the social preview is the single manual interrupt.
2. MCP servers as the agentic surface for GitHub. github/github-mcp-server exposes the GitHub API as tools an LLM can call. There's no tool for social preview because there's no API to wrap. The MCP team can't ship this until the platform does.
3. Security-tooling release pipelines. I just shipped Halberd, a JSON-RPC firewall for MCP agents. Its goreleaser pipeline handles multi-arch binaries, checksums, GitHub Release creation, archive bundling — the only step that can't be automated is uploading the social preview. The asset lives in the repo at assets/social-preview.png; CI could upload it; the web-UI requirement is the lone blocker.

Proposed API surface

PUT /repos/{owner}/{repo}/social-preview
Content-Type: image/png
Body: <binary image>

DELETE /repos/{owner}/{repo}/social-preview

Mirror in GraphQL via updateRepository(input: { socialPreview: Upload }) so the existing Repository.openGraphImageUrl read field has a write counterpart.

Downstream impact

Once the API ships, two downstream features land essentially for free:

• gh repo edit --social-preview ./card.png in cli/cli
• An update_repository_social_preview tool in github/github-mcp-server

Happy to follow up with concrete PRs against either once the platform endpoint exists.

cc @Andrew6rant @karol-brejna-i @SableRaf — figure you'd want to know this is getting a refresh with 2026 context.

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[Builder106]

@Andrew6rant @karol-brejna-i @SableRaf Bump so this doesn't get forgotten.

[Builder106]

Four months on, this is still the one step in my repo setup I can't automate. Has anyone found a supported way to do it, or run into the same gap? A public API would let me handle it in CI.