Redmine vs Shortcut

Redmine

Redmine's REST API covers issues, projects, time entries and 20 other resources, and versions 6.1 and later add OAuth 2 with one scope per permission. The software is free under the GPL. No OpenAPI document exists, most errors return a bare status code, and 24 security advisories were published in twelve months, two rated critical.

Shortcut

REST API v3 and the hosted MCP server are included on the Free plan, with downloadable OpenAPI files and OAuth scopes down to story or comment writes on the MCP side. The API still accepts the token in a query string, and no idempotency keys, Retry-After header, uptime SLA or API changelog were found in the reviewed documentation.

Redmine

1. Ask an administrator to tick Enable REST API under Administration, Settings, API. It is off by default and every call fails until then
2. Send the key in the X-Redmine-API-Key header, never as the key query parameter, and set Content-Type: application/json on every POST and PUT
3. Add status_id=* to issue lists. The default returns open issues only, 25 a page with a maximum of 100
4. Comment on an issue by sending notes in a PUT to /issues/<id>.json. There is no separate comment endpoint
5. A DELETE on a project through the API skips the confirmation the web page asks for, so run the agent as a non-administrator user

Shortcut

1. Send the v3 token in the Shortcut-Token header. v4 (alpha) takes Authorization: Bearer with sct_ro_ or sct_rw_ tokens, and v3 tokens don't work there.
2. Create a story with name and workflow_state_id. Sending both workflow_state_id and project_id, or neither, is rejected.
3. Use GET /api/v3/search/stories with detail=slim, page_size (1 to 250) and the next token. Many other v3 list endpoints return every record at once.
4. Stay under 200 requests a minute and add your own backoff on 429, because no Retry-After header is documented.
5. For MCP, connect to https://mcp.shortcut.com/mcp and request only the scopes needed, such as read or story-write.