Buildkite details build comparison and selective retries for its MCP server

Buildkite described two MCP Server tools for investigating failed builds in a changelog entry dated October 8, 2026. One compares a build with an earlier passing run; the other, the company says, retries infrastructure failures rather than rerunning every failed job.

The retry tool, retry_failed_jobs, targets problems such as an expired job or an agent that was lost or stopped. Buildkite says it leaves genuine failures alone and reports every job it retried or skipped, along with the reason. An agent can also request a dry run to see what would be retried without changing the build. The entry gives examples of infrastructure failures, but does not spell out the full rules for separating them from other failures.

For investigation, compare_builds compares a build with the most recent earlier passing build on the same branch, or another build the user chooses. It identifies steps that newly failed, recovered or remained failing, alongside changes in run time and retries. For up to three newly failing steps, it includes the end of the job log, giving the agent some diagnostic output as well as a list of changed results.

The October 8 entry is not a firm debut date for build comparison. A weekly summary dated October 2 on the same captured page already lists that capability among the MCP server’s additions. Its exact release date remains unclear.

Buildkite lists both tools as available in the open-source MCP server and the Remote MCP Server. Remote users need to sign in again through their MCP client to grant the permissions required by the new tools.