What Visual Studio Code does
Visual Studio Code is an open source code editor whose chat agent connects to MCP servers declared in an mcp.json file in a workspace or in the user profile. It supports the stdio, Streamable HTTP and legacy SSE transports, and consumes server tools, prompts, resources, elicitation, sampling, roots and MCP Apps.
Why teams reach for it: MCP servers are installed from a gallery inside the editor and configured either in a checked-in .vscode/mcp.json that a team shares through source control or in a user profile that follows the developer across every workspace.
How Visual Studio Code compares
Fields the vendor doesn't document are left blank here rather than guessed — a blank means nothing verified, not a "no."
- Platform
- Desktop app
- Transports
- stdio, SSE, Streamable HTTP
- Remote Server Support
- Yes
- Oauth Support
- Yes
- Client Registration Mode
- DCR, manual
- Tools
- Yes
- Resources
- Yes
- Prompts
- Yes
- Config Scope
- user or global, workspace or project, dev container
- One Click Install
- Both
- Open Source
- Open core
Which host will connect to the server?
A client, or agent host, is the application — like Claude or Cursor — that actually connects to and uses an MCP server.