Extending GitHub Copilot with the Model Context Protocol (MCP)

This chapter shows how to extend GitHub Copilot with the Model Context Protocol (MCP), a simple, consistent way to connect GitHub Copilot to outside data and tools. Think of MCP as a universal plug – you add MCP “servers” that offer additional tools for GitHub Copilot that can then read and write to resources such as logs or docs, and call actions such as opening issues or running checks, all with clear inputs, outputs, and safe authentication.

We will start with quick editor steps in VS Code, explain what MCP standardizes, and then bring everything together with practical examples. You will follow an end-to-end flow that fetches an error from Azure and creates a GitHub issue, then see how MCP makes the GitHub Copilot Coding Agent more powerful by connecting to project tools such as Jira. By the end, you will know how MCP works and why it matters for extending GitHub Copilot’s context into...