mcpfold for VS Code
Manage your MCP servers from one config — and stop paying the context-window tax — without leaving
your editor.
mcpfold keeps one canonical config for your Model Context Protocol
servers and folds it out to every client (Claude, Cursor, VS Code, Windsurf, Zed, and more), loading
only the tools each agent needs and keeping secrets as references instead of hardcoded values. This
extension puts the CLI's everyday commands — and a live drift indicator — in your status bar.
Features
- One-click commands — Sync, Preview changes (diff), Import from clients, Doctor, and Init, from
the Command Palette or the status-bar menu.
- Live sync status — a status-bar item shows whether your MCP clients are in sync with your
canonical config (✓ in sync / ⚠ drift), re-checked when you save a config file. It runs
mcpfold sync --check, which writes nothing.
- Token calculator — jump to the free MCP token calculator
to see what your servers cost you in context tokens.
- Zero lock-in — a thin front-end over the open-source
mcpfold CLI. It never reimplements CLI
behavior, so what you see here is exactly what mcpfold sync does.
Requirements
The mcpfold CLI. The extension auto-detects a global
install, and otherwise falls back to npx mcpfold@latest (needs Node.js 20+). To install it globally:
npm install -g mcpfold
Getting started
- Open a folder that has (or will have) an
mcp.config.jsonc.
- Run mcpfold: Init a config from the Command Palette, then mcpfold: Import servers from
clients to pull in what you already have.
- Run mcpfold: Sync to all clients. Watch the status bar for drift from then on.
Settings
| Setting |
Default |
What it does |
mcpfold.path |
(empty) |
Path to the mcpfold binary. Empty = auto-detect (global, else npx). |
mcpfold.useNpx |
false |
Always run via npx mcpfold@latest. |
mcpfold.checkDriftOnSave |
true |
Re-check sync status when a config file is saved. |
Links
Contributing
Press F5 in the apps/vscode-extension folder to launch the extension in a development host
(see .vscode/launch.json). The smoke-test checklist and Marketplace
publish runbook live in PUBLISHING.md.
mcpfold is an independent, open-source project and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the MCP
project, Anthropic, or any client named here.
