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maashkinoozhe e3ae7d5e5b Rename project to Cortex

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Visual Studio and MCP Setup

This guide covers two related workflows:

Running Cortex integration tests from Visual Studio Test Explorer.
Connecting an MCP-capable Copilot client to the Cortex MCP server.

Visual Studio Test Explorer

Visual Studio can run the integration tests because they are ordinary xUnit tests.

Steps

Open Cortex.slnx.
Start the isolated test stack:
```
.\scripts\deploy-test.ps1
```
In Visual Studio, open Test Explorer.
Run tests under Cortex.IntegrationTests.

The tests connect to:

http://localhost:5217

Override that by setting:

$env:CORTEX_TEST_BASE_URL = "http://localhost:5217"

Connecting a Copilot MCP Client

Cortex uses Streamable HTTP MCP.

The Blazor web UI is not needed for this. It is only a browser-based helper for local testing and memory inspection.

Dev endpoint:

http://localhost:5117/mcp

Test endpoint:

http://localhost:5217/mcp

Visual Studio Full IDE

As of this documentation pass, Microsoft has clear public documentation for MCP server configuration in Visual Studio Code. I did not find equivalent official full Visual Studio IDE documentation for a stable mcp.json location.

If your Visual Studio installation exposes MCP server configuration through GitHub Copilot or an agent customization UI, use the same Streamable HTTP server details:

{
  "servers": {
    "cortex": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "http://localhost:5117/mcp"
    }
  }
}

If Visual Studio asks for a URL directly, enter:

http://localhost:5117/mcp

If your Visual Studio build does not expose MCP server configuration, use Visual Studio for normal coding and Test Explorer, and use Visual Studio Code or another MCP-capable client for Cortex tool calls.

Visual Studio Code MCP Setup

VS Code supports workspace-level MCP configuration through .vscode/mcp.json.

Create:

.vscode/mcp.json

Add:

{
  "servers": {
    "cortex": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "http://localhost:5117/mcp"
    }
  }
}

The same example is available at docs/examples/vscode-mcp.dev.json.

Then:

Start Cortex:
```
.\scripts\deploy-all.ps1
```
Open the VS Code command palette.
Run MCP: List Servers.
Start or enable cortex.
Open Chat and select/configure tools.

For the test instance:

{
  "servers": {
    "cortex-test": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "http://localhost:5217/mcp"
    }
  }
}

The same example is available at docs/examples/vscode-mcp.test.json.

Example Prompts

After connecting an MCP client:

Create a Cortex project named Home.

Remember in the Home project as a location: my USB-C charging brick is in the blue backpack.

Find Home memories about the charging brick.

Add a todo in the Home project: buy a replacement USB-C cable.

Trust and Safety

Cortex is local and currently unauthenticated. Treat the endpoint as trusted-local only:

Keep it bound to localhost for development.
Do not expose it to the public internet.
Review MCP tool calls before approving them in a client.
Use explicit projects to avoid accidental memory mixing.

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