Cheatsheet

VS Code - Use MCP servers

Use MCP servers in VS Code (opens in a new tab)

Docker Desktop - Use MCP Toolkit as a gateway to MCP servers

How Docker MCP Toolkit Works with VS Code Copilot Agent Mode (opens in a new tab)

• Using stdio transport
• Benefits: no need to install MCP servers individually for every MCP client
• Troubleshooting

1. In shell, run docker mcp gateway run to start the gateway

   If successful, you should see output like:

   > Initialized in 3.6674523s
   > Start stdio server

2. If not, go to Docker Desktop and remove the MCP server that is causing issues and run the command again.

The appropriate number of tools to use

According to Goose, no more than 60 tools from MCP servers is recommended to be loaded to avoid performance degradation.

Resources

• Introduction - Model Context Protocol (opens in a new tab)

• GitHub - modelcontextprotocol/servers (opens in a new tab)

  MCP Server Reference Implementations

• Official MCP Registry (opens in a new tab)

Resources - Tools

• GitHub - modelcontextprotocol/inspector (opens in a new tab)

  • For testing and debugging MCP servers

  • Tutorial (opens in a new tab)

  • Running

    dr --rm --network host -p 6274:6274 -p 6277:6277 ghcr.io/modelcontextprotocol/inspector

Protocol

• Base Protocol

  Core JSON-RPC message types

• Lifecycle Management

  Connection initialization, capability negotiation, and session control

• Authorization

  Authentication and authorization framework for HTTP-based transports

• Server Features

  Resources, prompts, and tools exposed by servers

• Client Features

  Sampling and root directory lists provided by clients

• Utilities

  Cross-cutting concerns like logging and argument completion

MCP Server

MCP Server - Transport

1. stdio
2. Streamable HTTP