fix: disable MCP servers by default to prevent token limit errors

[jakkaj]

Pull Request

Description

Disables MCP servers by default by renaming .vscode/mcp.json to .vscode/mcp.json.sample. Contributors opt in by renaming or copying server entries into their own
mcp.json.

Related Issue(s)

N/A — discovered during contributor onboarding.

Type of Change

Infrastructure & Configuration:

• DevContainer configuration

Testing

Verified that with mcp.json removed, GitHub Copilot CLI no longer loads the WorkIQ or GitHub MCP servers automatically, avoiding the token limit error shown below:

CAPIError: 400 prompt token count of 186315 exceeds the limit of 168000

Checklist

Required Checks

• Documentation is updated (if applicable)
• Files follow existing naming conventions
• Changes are backwards compatible (if applicable)
• Tests added for new functionality (if applicable)

Required Automated Checks

• Markdown linting: npm run lint:md
• Spell checking: npm run spell-check
• Frontmatter validation: npm run lint:frontmatter

Security Considerations

• This PR does not contain any sensitive or NDA information
• Any new dependencies have been reviewed for security issues

Additional Notes

The MCP server configs (GitHub HTTP endpoint and WorkIQ via npx) are preserved in mcp.json.sample. The README has been updated with a note explaining how to enable them.

[codecov-commenter]

Codecov Report

✅ All modified and coverable lines are covered by tests.
✅ Project coverage is 86.78%. Comparing base (4229df1) to head (11b943f).

Additional details and impacted files

@@            Coverage Diff             @@
##             main    #1144      +/-   ##
==========================================
- Coverage   86.91%   86.78%   -0.14%     
==========================================
  Files          59       59              
  Lines        8752     8688      -64     
==========================================
- Hits         7607     7540      -67     
- Misses       1145     1148       +3     

Flag	Coverage Δ
pester	85.34% <ø> (-0.02%)	⬇️

Flags with carried forward coverage won't be shown. Click here to find out more.
see 4 files with indirect coverage changes

🚀 New features to boost your workflow:

• ❄️ Test Analytics: Detect flaky tests, report on failures, and find test suite problems.

[WilliamBerryiii]

@katriendg & @agreaves-ms - the MCP server for workiq is causing some friction ... I think we need to disable it by default ... I was hitting this earlier and had to disable things to deal with the crashing.

[katriendg]

@WilliamBerryiii @jakkaj Interesting, I have not noticed this issue in local environment, but I wonder if this is why we were also seeing some issues on GitHub coding agent (same error message).
I believe this is a good current fix until we evaluate how to make the onboarding a bit easier without manual MCP setup for contributors.
I believe WorkIq addition we did being in experimental maturity for Meeting Analysti Agent is not yet in HVE Core installer or docs (https://github.com/microsoft/hve-core/blob/main/docs/getting-started/mcp-configuration.md), so we should be fine there.

[katriendg]

@jakkaj Thanks for adding this one, to complete the PR we must link the associated issue for this fix, and update the ms.date field in the MD file you changed to pass CI.