A Unified Approach for Installing MCP Servers in IDEs and Tools#2979

We're proposing a standardized mechanism to distribute and integrate Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers using VS Code extensions, so that tools like Cursor---compatible with the VS Code extension API---can dynamically discover, install, and run MCP servers without relying on external package managers or custom per-tool solutions. This follows the spirit of MCP itself: to standardize how AI-powered tools access and utilize contextual information and capabilities, and to reduce fragmentation across the ecosystem. The aim is to make life easier for both end users and MCP server providers, enabling a single MCP extension to work out of the box across multiple tools (VS Code, Cursor, Windsurf, Theia, etc.). We're coordinating the technical discussion in a central thread: [modelcontextprotocol/discussions/274](https://github.com/orgs/modelcontextprotocol/discussions/274). We'd love your feedback, thoughts, or concerns! **Our background:** We are the team behind [Theia AI](https://theia-ide.org/theia-ai/) and are looking for a better way to support our users in using MCP servers in tools and IDEs. We believe a unified solution adopted by several tools would get more traction and be beneficial for the ecosystem and especially end users.