Extending Copilot Chat with the Model Context Protocol (MCP)

Enterprises and organizations can choose to enable or disable use of MCP for members of their organization or enterprise. See Managing policies and features for Copilot in your enterprise. The MCP policy only applies to members with Copilot Business, Copilot Enterprise, or Copilot licenses assigned by the organization or enterprise that configures the policy. Copilot 免费版, Copilot 专业版, or Copilot Pro+ do not have their MCP access governed by this policy.

Prerequisites

• Access to Copilot. 有关如何访问 Copilot 的信息，请参阅“什么是 GitHub Copilot？”。
• Visual Studio Code version 1.99 or later. For information on installing Visual Studio Code, see the Visual Studio Code download page.
• If you are a member of an organization or enterprise with a Copilot Business or Copilot Enterprise plan, the "MCP servers in Copilot" policy must be enabled in order to use MCP.

Configuring MCP servers in Visual Studio Code

To configure MCP servers in Visual Studio Code, you need to set up a configuration script that specifies the details of the MCP servers you want to use. You can configure MCP servers for either:

• 特定仓库。 这使你能够将 MCP 服务器共享给任何在 Visual Studio Code 中打开该项目的人。 为此，请在仓库的根目录中，创建 .vscode/mcp.json 文件。

• Visual Studio Code 的个人实例。 你将是唯一有权访问已配置的 MCP 服务器的人员。 为此，请将配置添加到 Visual Studio Code 中的 settings.json 文件。 以这种方式配置的 MCP 服务器将在所有工作区中可用。

  注意

  We recommend you use only one location per server. Adding the same server to both locations may cause conflicts and unexpected behavior.

The steps below show how to configure the Fetch MCP server in your .vscode/mcp.json file. The Fetch MCP server is a simple MCP server that provides web content fetching capabilities. For more information on the Fetch MCP server, see the Fetch directory in the MCP Server repository.

You can use the same steps to configure MCP servers in your personal Visual Studio Code settings. Details on how to configure other MCP servers are available in the MCP servers repository.

For information on configuring the GitHub MCP server, see Using the GitHub MCP Server.

1. Add the following configuration to your .vscode/mcp.json file:

   JSON

   {
   "inputs": [
     // The "inputs" section defines the inputs required for the MCP server configuration.
     {
       "type": "promptString"
     }
   ],
   "servers": {
     // The "servers" section defines the MCP servers you want to use.
     "fetch": {
       "command": "uvx",
       "args": ["mcp-server-fetch"]
     }
    }
   }
   

2. Save the .vscode/mcp.json file.

3. A "Start" button will appear in your .vscode/mcp.json file, at the top of the list of servers. Click the "Start" button to start the MCP servers. This will trigger the input dialog and discover the server tools, which are then stored for later sessions.

   

4. Open Copilot Chat by clicking the icon in the title bar of Visual Studio Code.

5. In the Copilot Chat box, select Agent from the popup menu.

   

6. To view your list of available MCP servers, click the tools icon in the top left corner of the chat box. This will open the MCP server list, where you can see all the MCP servers and associated tools that are currently available in your Visual Studio Code instance.

   • Optionally, you can define toolsets, groups of related tools that you can reference in chat. Toolsets make it easier to group related MCP tools together and quickly enable or disable them. For information on how to define and use a toolset, see the VS Code docs.

For more information on configuring MCP servers in Visual Studio Code, see Use MCP servers in Visual Studio Code in the Visual Studio Code documentation.

Using MCP servers in Copilot Chat

Once you have configured your MCP servers, you can use them in Copilot Chat to access a wide range of tools and services. In the example below, we will use the Fetch MCP server to fetch details about a web page.

1. 单击 Visual Studio Code 标题栏中的 图标，打开 Copilot Chat。

2. 在 Copilot Chat 框中，从弹出菜单选择“Agent”****。

3. In the file with the MCP configuration, check that the MCP server is running. If it is not running, click the "Start" button to start the MCP server.

   

4. Ask Copilot Chat to fetch the details of a URL. For example:

   Fetch https://github.com/github/docs.

5. If Copilot asks you to confirm that you want to proceed, click Continue.

6. Copilot will fetch the details of the URL and display them in the chat box.

Optionally, you can use MCP prompts and resources in VS Code.

• MCP servers can define preconfigured prompts for interacting with their tools. You can access these prompts in chat with slash commands, using the format /mcp.servername.promptname.
• MCP servers provide resources, which are any kind of data that the server wants to make available. For example, the GitHub MCP server provides repository content as a resource. To add resources from an MCP server to your chat context, click Add Context... in the chat box, then click MCP Resources.

For more information on using MCP servers in Visual Studio Code, see Use MCP servers in Visual Studio Code in the Visual Studio Code documentation.

Using existing MCP configurations

If you already have an MCP configuration in Claude Desktop, you can use that configuration in Visual Studio Code to access the same MCP servers. To do this, add the following configuration to your settings.json file in Visual Studio Code:

"chat.mcp.discovery.enabled": true

"chat.mcp.discovery.enabled": true

Visual Studio Code will automatically find your existing configuration and use it in your Visual Studio Code instance.