MCP Bridge

Bridge MCP servers to VS Code Copilot Chat — expose any MCP tool as a native Copilot Chat tool via vscode.lm.registerTool().

In corporate environments where native MCP support in VS Code Chat is blocked by policy, MCP Bridge provides an alternative path: it connects to MCP servers as a regular VS Code extension and exposes their tools to Copilot Chat.

✨ Features

• 🔌 Multi-server support — Connect to any number of MCP servers simultaneously
• 🚀 All transports — Stdio, SSE, and Streamable HTTP
• 🛠️ Tool bridging — MCP tools accessible in Copilot Chat via 2 static proxy tools (mcp-bridge_call_tool + mcp-bridge_list_tools)
• 🔒 OAuth 2.1 + PKCE — Built-in authentication for HTTP-based MCP servers
• 🔄 Auto-reconnection — Exponential backoff reconnection when servers disconnect
• 🔍 Server discovery — Automatically detect servers from VS Code, Claude Desktop, and Cursor configs
• 🌲 Sidebar TreeView — Visual management of servers, tools, resources, and prompts
• 🔐 SecretStorage — OAuth tokens stored securely via VS Code SecretStorage

✨ New in v0.4.0

• 📦 Schema cache (F1) — TTL-based tool schema cache, refreshed on server connect (mcpBridge.schemaCacheTtlMinutes)
• 🗒️ Audit log (F2) — JSONL append-only record of every tool call, queryable via mcp-bridge_get_audit_log (mcpBridge.auditLog.*)
• 💊 Health dashboard (F3) — Per-server latency + error rate badges in the sidebar tree (mcpBridge.healthDashboard.*)
• ✅ Rich confirmation (F4) — Markdown confirmation previews before tool calls, with write-detection (mcpBridge.confirmCalls)
• 🛡️ Resilience (F5) — Per-server retry + circuit breaker via cockatiel (mcpBridge.resilience.*)
• ✂️ Auto-chunking (F6) — Automatic truncation/pagination for large MCP responses (mcpBridge.responseLimit.*)
• 🗂️ Registry templates (F7) — One-click install for popular MCP servers (GitHub, Filesystem, Brave Search, PostgreSQL, SQLite, Puppeteer)
• 📤 Config sync (F8) — Export and import server configurations, redacting secrets on export (mcp-bridge_export_config, mcp-bridge_import_config)
• 👤 Profiles (F9) — Named sets of active servers with status bar indicator and quick-switch (mcp-bridge_switch_profile, mcpBridge.profiles)
• ⚙️ Settings panel (F10) — Unified webview UI for all configuration (MCP Bridge: Open Settings Panel)

🚀 Quick Start

1. Install the extension from the VS Code Marketplace
2. Add a server via the command palette (MCP Bridge: Add Server) or in settings.json:

{
  "mcpBridge.servers": {
    "my-server": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@anthropic/mcp-server-atlassian"],
      "env": {
        "ATLASSIAN_API_TOKEN": "${env:ATLASSIAN_API_TOKEN}"
      }
    }
  }
}

3. Use in Copilot Chat — Reference #mcpTool or use @mcp /tools to discover available tools

⚙️ Configuration

Add MCP servers to your VS Code settings.json under mcpBridge.servers:

{
  "mcpBridge.servers": {
    "atlassian": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@anthropic/mcp-server-atlassian"],
      "env": {
        "ATLASSIAN_API_TOKEN": "${env:ATLASSIAN_API_TOKEN}"
      },
      "enabled": true
    },
    "my-api": {
      "type": "sse",
      "url": "http://localhost:3000/sse",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer ${env:MY_API_TOKEN}"
      }
    },
    "remote": {
      "type": "streamable-http",
      "url": "https://mcp.example.com/api"
    }
  }
}

Server Options

Global Settings

🌐 Supported Transports

🛠️ Available Tools

MCP Bridge registers 16 tools accessible via Copilot Chat. Two proxy tools bridge any MCP tool call, and fourteen management tools handle server lifecycle and observability.

Why proxy tools? VS Code requires every tool name to be statically declared in the extension manifest (package.json). Since MCP tool names are discovered dynamically at runtime (e.g., mcp-atlassian_confluence_get_page), they cannot be pre-declared. The proxy pattern lets any MCP tool be invoked without manifest changes.

Proxy Tools

Example usage in Copilot Chat:

List all available MCP tools #mcpTools
Call the Jira search tool with query "my issues" #mcpTool

Management Tools

💬 Commands

⚠️ Migrating from 0.3.x → 0.4.0

v0.4.0 replaces per-server dynamic tool registration with two static proxy tools. This resolves 219 "Tool was not contributed" Extension Host errors from v0.3.0.

Before (0.3.x): each discovered MCP tool was registered as an individual VS Code language model tool (e.g., #mcp-bridge_confluence_get_page). VS Code requires every tool name to be declared in the extension manifest before activation — dynamically discovered names were rejected at runtime.

After (0.4.0): two static proxy tools bridge all MCP calls:

Example prompt:

What Confluence pages can I access? Use #mcpTools to check available tools, then #mcpTool to call the right one.

No configuration changes are required — server definitions in mcpBridge.servers are unchanged.

🏗️ Architecture Overview

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│                    VS Code                          │
│                                                     │
│  ┌──────────┐    ┌──────────────┐    ┌──────────┐  │
│  │ Copilot  │◄──►│  MCP Bridge  │◄──►│ Sidebar  │  │
│  │  Chat    │    │  Extension   │    │ TreeView │  │
│  └──────────┘    └──────┬───────┘    └──────────┘  │
│                         │                           │
│         vscode.lm.registerTool()                    │
└─────────────────────────┬───────────────────────────┘
                          │
              ┌───────────┼───────────┐
              ▼           ▼           ▼
         ┌────────┐  ┌────────┐  ┌────────┐
         │ stdio  │  │  SSE   │  │  HTTP  │
         │ server │  │ server │  │ server │
         └────────┘  └────────┘  └────────┘

src/
├── extension.ts           # Activation — wires all modules
├── types.ts               # Shared TypeScript interfaces
├── mcp/
│   ├── transport.ts       # Transport factory (Stdio/SSE/StreamableHTTP)
│   ├── client.ts          # MCP Client wrapper
│   ├── manager.ts         # Multi-connection manager with reconnection
│   ├── schema-cache.ts    # TTL-based tool schema cache (F1)
│   ├── health-tracker.ts  # Per-server latency + error tracking (F3)
│   └── resilience.ts      # Retry + circuit breaker via cockatiel (F5)
├── audit/
│   └── audit-log.ts       # JSONL append-only audit log (F2)
├── tools/
│   ├── provider.ts        # Tool registration bridge (vscode.lm.registerTool)
│   ├── confirmation-formatter.ts  # Rich tool call confirmation (F4)
│   └── response-limiter.ts        # Auto-chunking for large responses (F6)
├── registry/
│   ├── panel.ts           # Registry browser WebviewPanel (F7)
│   └── template-loader.ts # Curated server template catalogue (F7)
├── settings/
│   ├── panel.ts           # Unified Settings WebviewPanel (F10)
│   └── panel-helpers.ts   # Pure helpers for settings panel (F10)
├── sidebar/
│   ├── tree-provider.ts   # TreeDataProvider with health badges (F3)
│   └── commands.ts        # Sidebar + profile + sync commands (F8/F9)
└── config/
    └── settings.ts        # Configuration management + profiles (F9)

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

1. Fork the repository
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b feature/amazing-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -m 'feat: add amazing feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin feature/amazing-feature)
5. Open a Pull Request

Development

npm install
npm run build     # Production build with esbuild
npm run watch     # Watch mode for development
npm run compile   # Type check
npm run test      # Run tests

📄 License

This project is licensed under the MIT License — see the LICENSE file for details.