Claude Code plugin doesn't load the MCP server (mcp_config.json is unreferenced)

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Assessment

Difficulty
2/5
Estimated time
1-3 hours
Newbie friendliness
72/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Clearly specified
Activity status
Quiet
Domain
cli, tooling

Research direction

Start with .claude-plugin/plugin.json and mcp_config.json, then inspect the Claude Code plugin reference linked in the issue. Run claude plugin install google-secops@google-secops or claude --plugin-dir . to verify the plugin loads. Done means the google-security-operations MCP server is registered and its tools are available to the skills.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Problem

The Claude Code plugin manifest (.claude-plugin/plugin.json) only declares
{name, description, version, author} — it has no mcpServers field, and
there is no .mcp.json file at the plugin root.

Claude Code auto-loads MCP server config only from a file literally named
.mcp.json at the plugin root, or from a path explicitly referenced via a
"mcpServers" field in plugin.json. The repo's mcp_config.json (which
correctly defines the google-security-operations MCP server) satisfies
neither condition, so it is never loaded.

Net effect: claude plugin install google-secops@google-secops (or
claude --plugin-dir .) installs the 5 skills (triage, investigate, hunt,
cases, detection-engineering) but registers no MCP tools. The skills have no
backend to call. This is Claude-Code-specific — gemini-extension.json
inlines the same MCP config directly and works fine for Gemini CLI.

Fix

Either:

  1. Rename mcp_config.json.mcp.json, or
  2. Add "mcpServers": "./mcp_config.json" to .claude-plugin/plugin.json

Ref: https://code.claude.com/docs/en/plugins-reference.md#mcp-servers

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