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Installation & Setup

Recommended Development Setup

How to configure your editor and assistant for Mouse

Overview

Mouse works out of the box with any supported editor and AI assistant. The recommendations below help you get the most out of your setup.

Prerequisites

  • Node.js 20.x or later: Required for the Mouse MCP server
  • VS Code 1.85+ (or latest version of your supported editor)
  • Latest version of GitHub Copilot (comes pre-installed and built-in; requires account and subscription)

For the best experience with Mouse, disable your assistant's built-in file-editing tools. This way, your assistant always uses Mouse's precision operations instead of falling back to string replacement.

GitHub Copilot in VS Code

  1. Open the Copilot Chat panel
  2. Click the Tools tab (wrench icon)
  3. Find edit > editFiles and toggle it off

With editFiles disabled, Copilot will use Mouse tools exclusively for all file-editing operations.

TIP

With the latest version of GitHub Copilot, disabling editFiles is sufficient. You do not need to add any Mouse-specific instructions to your copilot-instructions.md file.

Disable tool_search_tool_regex (VS Code)

We strongly recommend disabling the tool_search_tool_regex setting. Without disabling it, Copilot may incorrectly conclude that Mouse tools are unavailable based on pattern-matching rules that don't account for MCP tools.

Open your VS Code settings (Ctrl+, / Cmd+,) and search for tool_search_tool_regex, then clear or disable the setting.

Kiro

Kiro's built-in tools cannot be disabled. We recommend stating clearly in your .kiro/steering/ instructions that Kiro should use Mouse tools for all file-editing operations. In longer conversations, you may need to remind Kiro to use Mouse tools, as Kiro's built-in system instructions are repeated at each turn while user instructions are injected only at the beginning of the conversation.

Other Editors

For Cursor, Claude Code, Roo Code, and Kilo Code, no additional configuration is needed. Mouse tools are used automatically once the workspace is initialized.

Workspace Initialization

After installing Mouse, initialize each workspace where you want to use it:

  1. Open the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P / Cmd+Shift+P)
  2. Run Mouse: Initialize Workspace
  3. Select your AI coding assistant from the dropdown
  4. Reload the editor window when prompted

This creates a .hic directory in your project containing the Mouse MCP server, along with the appropriate MCP configuration file for your selected assistant.

Verifying Your Setup

To confirm Mouse is running:

  • Check the status bar; it should display Mouse: Trial (14d) or Mouse: Licensed
  • Run Mouse: Show Status from the Command Palette
  • Ask your assistant to call the license_status tool

To confirm your assistant can use Mouse tools, ask it to run get_file_metadata or read_lines on any file in your workspace. If the tool call succeeds, your setup is complete.