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Mads Kristensen Eyes MCP Server for Visual Studio Copilot
"What MCP server would be helpful to use with Copilot in Visual Studio? I want to write one."
With that May 6 social media post, Mads Kristensen, a principal program manager at Microsoft, solicited feedback on what is apparently his next pet project. Kristensen, who has been with Microsoft for nearly 15 years, is known for creating several popular extensions -- including Web Essentials and File Nesting -- that provide functionality that often gets baked into the IDE itself.
[Click on image for larger view.] What Would Be Helpful? (source: X).
By turning his attention to Model Context Protocol servers, Kristensen is tackling one of the hottest areas of advanced AI development right now -- agentic AI -- seeking to standardize how Visual Studio integrates with external tools and data sources to enhance AI-driven development workflows.
The MCP, introduced by Anthropic in November 2024, is an open standard that enables AI models to seamlessly connect with external tools and data sources. By providing a standardized interface, MCP allows AI applications to access real-time information and functionalities without the need for custom integrations. This facilitates more context-aware and efficient AI-driven workflows, particularly beneficial for developers using environments like Visual Studio.
[Click on image for larger view.] MCP Architecture (source: Microsoft).
Since its debut, MCP has gained significant traction, with adoption by major tech companies and integration into various development tools, signaling its growing importance in the AI ecosystem. Last month, for example, Microsoft announced a C# SDK NuGet package.
[Click on image for larger view.] MCP NugGet (circa mid-April) (source: Microsoft).
The company also last month debuted along a MCP lab for Copilot Studio.
A specific, customized MCP server acts as a tailored bridge between AI models and particular tools, data sources, or workflows. In the context of Visual Studio, such an MCP server could conceivably enable AI assistants to perform tasks like retrieving project-specific documentation, accessing real-time build statuses, or interacting with version control systems. This integration allows developers to receive context-aware assistance directly within their development environment, streamlining workflows and enhancing productivity.
Visual Studio's little open-source-based cousin, Visual Studio Code, has already seen a number of MCP servers developed for it, and as is often the case, tech introduced in VS Code might be finding its way to Visual Studio 2022.
While some of the responses about sought-after types of MCP servers weren't serious, many were, ranging from suggestions for MCP servers that integrate with CI/CD pipelines to those that fetch Azure DevOps issues or control the debugger.
Here's a list of some of the comments so far:
- MCP for CI/CD pipelines 😁
- We just released a search engine for MCP servers so you can see what’s already built, and find a niche. https://mcpoogle.com
- It’s not MCP, but I would 💜 to be able to use @grok with Copilot!
- Vibe needs one for Vibe app context completions in code. It's on my roadmap but I'm putting the finishing touches on what I think will be the final preview.
- MCP server that connects to the running application, like @josevalim one.
- Check out how http://n8n.io uses MCPs. I think we need something like this in Azure, VS Code, and VS2022. MCP is huge if not only used for copilot.
- Fork-Join server. Fork a question to 5 different bots, use DSpy to infer the best version to pick.
- MCP Server that serves the latest .net documentation
- Some thingie that serves version numbers of nuget packages or docker image tags so that generated code always uses current versions for any package manager.
- An mcp that could create multiple files/projects based on temples
- SQL Server DB Schema
- The one which can fetch issues/prs from the AzDo instance
- Let it control the debugger, set breakpoints, add watches, etc...
- A new figma MCP server but this one focused on exposing user-flows and features for POs rather than the technical screen information for devs
- Maybe an ADO mcp were you integrate links to user stories
- For professional .net work purposes my team still needs Visual Studio - and therefore we need the likes of Jira, Confluence, maybe Github repos and other 'legacy' tools to give context in this new world. I know VS Code does a lot of this well - but .net is being left behind.
- Direct talk with DevOps or Git for the backlog/board to understand the task touched in the commit and move them from a state to another, direct link to the Kb/wiki to read and update it according to commit.
- Playwright MCP integrated into copilot. xUnit testing for endpoints.
Stay tuned to see what results.
About the Author
David Ramel is an editor and writer at Converge 360.