Integration of MCP settings with VS Code

[CatsMiaow]

Describe the feature or problem you'd like to solve

It would be ideal if running the Copilot CLI in a VS Code project could load the MCP information already configured in VS Code.

Proposed solution

When you run the Copilot CLI in a VS Code project terminal, it retrieves and loads MCP information from .vscode/mcp.json in the project and from Code/User/mcp.json in the VS Code user settings.
This prevents duplication of MCP configurations and allows centralized management through integration with VS Code.

[bartlettroscoe]

The same would go for custom prompts and all of the other work that goes into setting up VS Code Copilot Chat. If you have gone through all of that work to set up VS Code Copilot Chat for a given project, the copilot CLI should just use all of that.

See:

• Add scripting interface/batch mode for Copilot Agent Mode? microsoft/vscode#254473 (comment)

[bartlettroscoe]

Same goes for setup to call local models with VS Code Copilot Chat:

• https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/copilot/customization/language-models#_bring-your-own-language-model-key
• Add support for generic OAI endpoints microsoft/vscode-copilot-chat#621
• Model providers should be community driven microsoft/vscode#249605

(to be released for real in the Sept version released in October?) and the yet-to-be-completed:

• Use copilot with local models completely offline microsoft/vscode#246551

If you can call local models with VS Code Copilot Chat, you should be able to use them with GitHub Copilot CLI automatically.

What is strategy here? What is the relationship between VS Code Copilot Chat and GitHub Copilot CLI? Are they completely separate products with no relation between? If GitHub Copilot CLI is just going to be a dumb independent AI agent that goes off of an AGETNS.md file like Codex CLI, then what is the advantage using GitHub Copilot CLI over Codex CLI? Codex CLI is open source and I can use it to call locally hosted models. And it works pretty well.

Without leveraging the setup of a VS Code project with VS Code Copilot Chat setup, why would anyone bother with GitHub Copilot CLI?

Update:

See:

• GitHub Copilot CLI should fully integrate and leverage features from VS Code Copilot Chat setup and capabilities #54

[showpune]

Will Coding agent share the same configuration from vscode?

[dnguyen-wf]

I notice org wide custom agents are now available in the latest vscode, being able to config the same available mcps would help complete the usefulness of shared custom agents across an org

[RyanHecht]

We now load MCP settings from .vscode/mcp.json!