Use Visual Studio Code's MCP Server Installs

[adamhill]

TL;DR; Use VSC's MCP infrastructure. Don't have (as much of) our own.

Given the current featues in Visual Studio Code 1.102

MCP's are now first class citizens in Visual Studio Code / GH Copilot
They have:

• Implementation of all the features of the spec, including OAuth and Elicitations.
• Easy discovery and installation
• Extensive management capabilities and UX
• Inclusion into modes, prompts and tools for using / filtering / including / excluding specific MCP tools based on the Task at hand.
• Direct usage in the Chat prompt as a Chat participant
• A curated repository of best of breed MCP servers, vetted and trusted. And so does Docker.

Kilo is a VSCode extension and we have PR #684 as a POC for using VSC's Extension system to consume exposed tools for use by Kilo.

Microsoft just open sourced Copilot Chat

Idea

We should just use VSCode's MCP infrastructure for our own.

Benefits

• We don't expend effort and time for curating our own / monitoring others MCP Marketplaces
• We don't spend resources on UI for installing custom MCP's
• DO expend brainpower on adding features of MCP's that we dont support
  • Roots, Resources, Sampling, Elucidations
  • Kilo UX to let us use / filter / include / exclude specific MCP tools based on the Task at hand.

Challenges

• A big change conceptually in the code base
• Figuring out how to consume VSC's MCP infrastructure will be a bigish lift for implementors
• It will be a bigish departure from the way upstream deals with MCPs (unless they accept our PR)

Mitigations

• Small PR's (for us and upstream)
• Both sides are known working implementations of MCP's
• We got the community and @complyue 's PR :-)

Lightwieght implementation strategy / MVP

PR 1: Use the VSCode MCP.json as our own (global and project)

• No large changes.
• We consume it and internally transmogrify it for Kilo to use
• Manual installation in Kilo goes away

PR 1.5:

• Land [PoC] Make use of vscode.lm tools contributed by arbitrary VSCode extensions #684 and see how it behaves.

PR 2: Figure out how to use #684 to consume MCP tools (or let it guide us on how to use VSCs infra)

• Have both mechanisms in place
• New way is in Experimental, turning it on, turns off the legacy MCP usage
• Modify the system prompt(s) as needed for each side

Future PR's:

• Use VSC's infrastructure for using all the other parts of the MCP spec / adapt into our infra.
• UX for MCP's in our Task / Workflow system

I think this will make Kilo Better, Faster, Stronger.