Skip to main content
Compatibility

VS Code + GitHub Copilot

Set up Mouse with VS Code and GitHub Copilot: configuration, manual MCP start, and recommended settings

Prerequisites

  • VS Code 1.85 or later
  • GitHub Copilot extension (latest version recommended)
  • Node.js 20.x or later

Installing Mouse

  1. Open the Extensions panel in VS Code (Ctrl+Shift+X / Cmd+Shift+X)
  2. Search for Mouse by HIC AI, Inc.
  3. Click Install
  4. Open the Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P / Cmd+Shift+P) and run Mouse: Initialize Workspace

This creates a .hic directory in your project and generates the MCP configuration file at .vscode/mcp.json.

Configuration

The workspace initialization creates the following configuration automatically. If you need to configure it manually, create .vscode/mcp.json with:

{
  "servers": {
    "hic_local": {
      "type": "stdio",
      "command": "node",
      "args": ["./.hic/mouse.cjs"],
      "env": {
        "HIC_AGENT_ADAPTER": "copilot",
        "HIC_ALLOWED_DIRECTORIES": "./"
      }
    }
  }
}

Starting the MCP Server

After initializing the workspace, you must manually start the MCP server:

  1. Open .vscode/mcp.json in the editor
  2. Click the Start button that appears above the "hic_local" server configuration block
  3. Confirm that the server starts successfully

This manual start step is currently required for GitHub Copilot users.

How to Auto-Enable Mouse Tool Calls

VS Code does not expose a user-facing JSON file for configuration of auto-approvals of AI agent tools, instead saving those settings in a globalStorage state.vscdb file (on Windows machines), a local SQLite database file. The most convenient way to edit your tool settings is therefore to use the Command Palette inside VS Code by executing Ctrl+Shift+P > Chat: Manage Tool Approvals, then select hic_local > Run any tool without approval, and select OK.

Disable editFiles

We recommend disabling Copilot's built-in editFiles tool for the best compatibility with Mouse. The editFiles tool is a wrapper around replace_string_in_file and multi_replace_string_in_file, the string-replacement tools that Mouse is designed to replace.

To disable it:

  1. Open the Copilot chat panel
  2. Select the Tools tab
  3. Toggle edit > editFiles to off

If editFiles is not disabled, agents may attempt to use those built-in tools instead of Mouse.

WARNING

We strongly recommend against using VS Code's experimental tool search capabilities, a client-side implementation of dynamic MCP tool discovery functionality for Anthropic (4.5+) and OpenAI (GPT-5.4+) models. At present, tool_search does not enable agents to discover the full schema of required and optional parameters needed in order to make Mouse tool calls. Nor does tool_search enable agents to use the tools once discovered, even if MCP is properly configured and started. We will update this page if and when VS Code and Copilot update their implementation of this experimental feature. In the meantime, this experimental feature is disabled by default in VS Code and we recommend against enabling it while using Mouse tools.

Verifying the Connection

Ask your AI assistant:

"Use Mouse's get_file_metadata tool to check the metadata of any file in this workspace."

If the assistant successfully calls the tool and returns file metadata, Mouse is working correctly. Check the status bar; it should show Mouse: Trial or Mouse: Licensed.