GUI to invoke MCP tools from a panel in VS Code, outside of the chat interface.
This extension can use tools from any MCP server you already have configured in VS Code. Click the extension icon or use the command ">MCP: Find Tools" to bring up the list of tools you have available. You can then enter any possible parameters to the tool and click execute. The result will be displayed in your editor.
MCP often just wraps existing APIs, and VS Code handles authentication for those services. This extension provides a convenient way to access authenticated APIs directly. By invoking tools outside an AI agent, you can maintain full control over usage and receive unprocessed responses.
There is a dev container definition you can use.
From outside the dev container you can test the plugin with
npm run compile && code --extensionDevelopmentPath=. .
Run unit tests using npm run test:ui
Full integration tests using @vscode/test-electron run using npm test
I used AI to generate a lot of this codebase using the Orchestra agent workflow. That got me 80% of the way there and then I needed to do a lot of refactoring to get it into a better state. So if you see some code you think is terrible, the AI wrote it. But if you see some code that you think is good, I wrote it :p But seriously, I've reviewed the output pretty thoroughly and written enough of this project by hand that I have confidence in its quality.