VSCode Insiders no longer detects private mcp server registry

[cameracker]

It appears that the latest version of VSCode Insiders is not detecting or respecting the presence of an organization enforced MCP Server Registry. This was working before one of the updates last week.

The impact of this issue is that we may need to consider disallowing VSCode Insiders internally if we cannot restrict MCP Servers to approved ones on that version. Additionally, users on VSCode Insiders are no longer able to install MCP Servers that don't exist on the market place.

• Copilot Chat Extension Version: 0.37.2026012602
• VS Code Version: 1.109.0-insider
• OS Version: Windows 11 Enterprise 10.0.261000
• Feature (e.g. agent/edit/ask mode): MCP Server Registry internal allow list
• Selected model (e.g. GPT 4.1, Claude 3.7 Sonnet): NA
• Logs: NA

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Open VSCode Insiders
2. VSCode Insidersignores mcp server registry restriction and suggest open marketplace

VSCode (Expected)

VSCode Insiders (Observed)

[cameracker]

We were able to work around this by updating the serviceUrl property in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\Microsoft VS Code Insiders"\<versioned-dir>\resources\app\product.json to reference our MCP Server Registry URL.

[sandy081]

@cameracker
How is your private mcp registry configured? Is it through GitHub org policies?
If so, can you please check in the settings editor if the policies are applied or not - Type @hasPolicy and you should see the settings?
Can you please run the command Developer - Policy Diagnostics and share it with me?

[Garen]

@sandy081 @cameracker is tied up today but I can repro the issue and respond here (we are in the same org+company). The "@hasPolicy" doesn't show anything, however if I manually set a reg key I can get things working:

New-ItemProperty -Path "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\VSCodeInsiders" -Name "McpGalleryServiceURL" -Value "<REDACTED>" -PropertyType String -Force

Without the reg key, however, nothing shows up when "@hasPolicy" is entered in the Settings area, and none of our internal mcp servers show up. (Alternatively I can also manually edit the product.json as noted earlier).

With product.json at the default and no reg key set, I've run "Developer - Policy Diagnostics" for you and have attached it here.

Yes, we are in a github EMU and have an org policy. Note that since we are in an EMU we have to switch to our personal accounts to respond here (so the account in the attachment is different).

VSCodePolicyDiagnostics.md

[sandy081]

@Garen Thanks for the diagnostics. Found out the bug. Thanks for reporting.

[cameracker]

@sandy081 We really appreciate that you took the time to fix this. Thank you so much!!!