Set up GitHub MCP in VS Code

VS Code reads MCP server configuration from the following file:

Create this file if it does not already exist. For VS Code, this is inside your workspace .vscode/settings.json file under the mcp section.

Add the following to your VS Code config file:

{
  "servers": {
    "github-mcp": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "npx",
      "args": [
        "-y",
        "@modelcontextprotocol/server-github"
      ],
      "env": {
        "GITHUB_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN": "YOUR_GITHUB_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN"
      }
    }
  }
}

GitHub MCP requires the following environment variables:

Restart VS Code. GitHub MCP should appear in your MCP server list with 20 tools available.

This server adds approximately 10,300 tokens to your context window for tool definitions.