Skip to content

🧠 GitHub Copilot + MCP Gateway

Super-charge Copilot (or any VS Code chat agent that speaks MCP) with tools, prompts and resources from your own MCP Gateway.

With Copilot → MCP you can:

  • 🔧 call custom / enterprise tools from chat
  • 📂 pull live resources (configs, docs, snippets)
  • 🧩 render prompts or templates directly inside the IDE

Copilot supports SSE streams out-of-the-box; for environments that forbid long-lived HTTP or require local stdio, you can insert the bundled mcpgateway.wrapper bridge.

🛠 Prerequisites

  • VS Code ≥ 1.99
  • "chat.mcp.enabled": true in your settings.json
  • An MCP Gateway running (make serve, Docker, or container image)
  • A JWT or Basic credentials (admin / changeme in dev)

🔗 Option 1 - Direct SSE (best for prod / remote)

1 - Create .vscode/mcp.json

{
  "servers": {
    "mcp-gateway": {
      "type": "sse",
      "url": "https://mcpgateway.example.com/servers/UUID_OF_SERVER_1/sse",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer <YOUR_JWT_TOKEN>"
      }
    }
  }
}

Tip - generate a token

python3 -m mcpgateway.utils.create_jwt_token -u admin --exp 10080 --secret my-test-key

🔗 Option 2 - Streamable HTTP (best for prod / remote)

2 - Create .vscode/mcp.json

{
  "servers": {
    "mcp-gateway": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://mcpgateway.example.com/servers/UUID_OF_SERVER_1/mcp/",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer <YOUR_JWT_TOKEN>"
      }
    }
  }
}

🔗 Option 3 - Local stdio bridge (mcpgateway.wrapper)

Perfect when:

  • the IDE cannot add HTTP headers, or
  • you're offline / behind a corp proxy.

1 - Install the wrapper (one-liner)

pipx install --include-deps mcp-contextforge-gateway          # isolates in ~/.local/pipx/venvs
#   - or -
uv pip install mcp-contextforge-gateway                       # inside any uv/venv you like

2 - Create .vscode/mcp.json

{
  "servers": {
    "mcp-wrapper": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "python3",
      "args": ["-m", "mcpgateway.wrapper"],
      "env": {
        "MCP_SERVER_URL": "http://localhost:4444/servers/UUID_OF_SERVER_1/mcp",
        "MCP_AUTH": "Bearer <YOUR_JWT_TOKEN>",
        "MCP_TOOL_CALL_TIMEOUT": "120"
      }
    }
  }
}

That's it - VS Code spawns the stdio process, pipes JSON-RPC, and you're ready to roll.

🐳 Docker alternative 
{
  "command": "docker",
  "args": [
    "run", "--rm", "--network=host", "-i",
    "-e", "MCP_SERVER_URL=http://localhost:4444/servers/UUID_OF_SERVER_1",
    "-e", "MCP_AUTH=<YOUR_JWT_TOKEN>",
    "ghcr.io/ibm/mcp-context-forge:0.6.0",
    "python3", "-m", "mcpgateway.wrapper"
  ]
}

🧪 Verify inside Copilot

  1. Open Copilot Chat → switch to Agent mode.
  2. Click Tools - your Gateway tools should list.
  3. Try:
#echo { "message": "Hello from VS Code" }

Copilot routes the call → Gateway → tool, and prints the reply.

📝 Good to know

  • Use SSE for production, stdio for local/offline.
  • You can manage servers, tools and prompts from the Gateway Admin UI (/admin).
  • Need a bearer quickly? export MCP_AUTH=$(python3 -m mcpgateway.utils.create_jwt_token -u admin --secret my-test-key)

📚 Further Reading