GitHub Copilot MCP: add MCP servers in VS Code

VS Code

1. Run MCP: Add Server from the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P, or Cmd+Shift+P on macOS) and choose Workspace or Global. Or edit the file yourself: .vscode/mcp.json in the project, or your user mcp.json, opened with MCP: Open User Configuration.
2. For a remote server, add an entry under servers with "type": "http" and the url. Put API keys in an inputs variable rather than in the file.
3. Start the server with the Start action shown above it in mcp.json. For OAuth servers, click Auth and sign in in the browser.
4. Open the Chat view, select Agent mode, and use Configure Tools to switch individual tools on or off.

{
  "inputs": [
    {
      "type": "promptString",
      "id": "anythingmcp-key",
      "description": "AnythingMCP API key",
      "password": true
    }
  ],
  "servers": {
    "anythingmcp": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://cloud.anythingmcp.com/mcp/YOUR_SERVER_ID",
      "headers": { "X-API-Key": "${input:anythingmcp-key}" }
    }
  }
}

If you get Copilot through an organization on Copilot Business or Enterprise, an admin has to enable the MCP servers in Copilot policy, which is off by default. Copilot Free, Pro, Pro+ and Max are not governed by that policy.

Other IDEs and Copilot CLI

Copilot also supports MCP in Visual Studio, JetBrains IDEs, Xcode and Eclipse, and in Copilot CLI. GitHub's documentation lists remote MCP support with OAuth or a token for these editors; where the configuration lives differs per IDE.