Search Jira issue comments excluding specific author

[solo levelling]

I’d like to know if there’s an option to search and fetch Jira issue details — including comments — with the condition that all comments should exclude those from a specific author.

I was using Jira MCP server with JQL queries to search and fetch issue data, but I couldn’t achieve this filtering. If I fetch all comments, the dataset becomes too large, and I only need the filtered comments.

Is there a way to fetch only these comments without retrieving everything?

[Natalia_Kovalchuk_SaaSJet_ · Accepted solution]

Hi solo levelling!

Unfortunately, JQL can't help in such a case. 

As a workaround, I recommend trying Issue History for Jira (Work Item History) app by SaaSJet. 

The app helps track Jira issue changes, including comment history, in a structured way, with filtering and export options, making it easier than manually pulling and filtering large datasets. 

In your case, you can:

• select the required Jira project
• filter history by specific updaters/users
• and view only the comments from the selected users, excluding others

You will get the report showing the issue details and comments left only by the chosen users. 

With the app, you can also track edited and deleted comments. Here you can find more info: Jira Comment History: How to See Edits and Deletions

Hope it will be useful!

[solo levelling]

Thanks for the suggestion! I ended up fixing the issue by switching to the Jira REST API. I fetch all the issue data through the API and then use a Python script to filter out comments from specific authors.

The main problem with trying this via the Jira MCP server was that the AI context limit would get exceeded — especially because of automated comments being added to issues that I didn’t want my tool to process. By using REST API calls directly, I don’t run into those context limits, and I can pass only the filtered output to my AI for my use case.

So for now, I’m not using the MCP server, and REST API + Python filtering works perfectly for me.

[Prasanna Ravichandran]

Hi Solo,

Jira’s native JQL does not currently support searching comments while excluding a specific comment author directly.
You can search comment text using queries like comment ~ "text" but filtering by comment author/exclusion usually requires apps like ScriptRunner or JQL Search Extensions.
As a workaround, some teams use automation labels, custom fields, or activity stream gadgets for this type of filtering.

[solo levelling]

Thanks for the suggestion!