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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": ["${workspaceFolder}/.hic/mcp/src/core/server.js"],
      "env": {
        "HIC_AGENT_ADAPTER": "copilot",
        "HIC_ALLOWED_DIRECTORIES": "${workspaceFolder}"
      }
    }
  }
}

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.

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.

Disable tool_search_tool_regex

We strongly recommend disabling the tool_search_tool_regex setting. When enabled, Copilot injects a system instruction that can cause the agent to incorrectly conclude that Mouse tools are unavailable or blocked.

Add the following to your VS Code settings.json (Ctrl+, / Cmd+,, then click the {} icon to open the JSON editor):

"github.copilot.chat.anthropic.toolSearchTool.enabled": false

Without this setting disabled, you may experience issues where the agent claims that Mouse tools cannot be found or are inaccessible, despite the MCP server running correctly.

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.