Pass workspace directory to MCP servers

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#9,989 4 comments 5 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

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Assessment

Difficulty
2/5
Estimated time
1-3 hours
Newbie friendliness
62/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Quiet
Tech stack
rust, vscode
Domain
developer-experience, tooling

Research direction

No file or test is named; start by locating the VS Code extension entry point that spawns MCP servers and compare its cwd handling with the Codex CLI behavior described here. Done means MCP servers start in the active workspace root, including in the reported Remote: WSL setup, so path-dependent tools can detect the project without manual activation.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

enhancement mcp

Summary

The Codex VS Code extension spawns MCP servers from the VS Code installation directory instead of the workspace directory. This fundamentally breaks semantic code analysis tools like Serena that rely on correct working directory to index and analyze codebases.

Impact

Serena provides symbolic code operations that are essential for large codebase work:

  • find_symbol / find_referencing_symbols - call graph traversal
  • replace_symbol_body - precise symbol-level edits
  • get_symbols_overview - fast structural understanding

Without correct cwd, these tools cannot auto-detect the project, forcing users to manually activate projects every session. This defeats the purpose of semantic tooling.

Current State

Client MCP Server cwd Works?
Codex CLI Project directory ✅
Codex VS Code (Remote: WSL) /mnt/c/.../Microsoft VS Code ❌

Proposed Fix

When spawning MCP servers, pass cwd: ${workspaceFolder} (or the active workspace root). This is a one-line fix that would unblock all path-dependent MCP tools.

Workarounds Attempted

  1. --project-from-cwd flag in Serena - fails because cwd is wrong
  2. Manual activate_project each session - works but error-prone
  3. Wrapper scripts - cannot access workspace info at spawn time
  4. CODEX_WORKSPACE_ROOT env var - only available at tool-call time, not spawn time

I've also filed a feature request on Serena to use CODEX_WORKSPACE_ROOT at tool-call time (oraios/serena#970), but the proper fix should be in the VS Code extension.

Related Issues

  • #7281 - WSL2 Remote spawns MCP with wrong cwd (my previous report)
  • #4222 - MCP servers not launched in workspace folder
  • #5387 - Related duplicate

Environment

  • Codex VS Code extension: v0.4.67
  • Platform: WSL2 Ubuntu on Windows 11
  • VS Code: Remote - WSL
Dominant language
Rust
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