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Comment by thomasfromcdnjs | Hacker News Reader

Do you run the mcp servers in the cloud, or just download them to be installed in vscode?

Right now they are defined as a command (typically npx, uvx, docker or another way of running code) and run as a subprocess in VS Code, which is the same starting point that tools like Claude Desktop have used. We're also going to support SSE-based servers though, which will make it possible to hook Continue up to an MCP that runs anywhere.

I certainly feel that running them locally isn't the end state, curious if others have started to feel pains there yet?

I'm of two minds. I currently use 3 MCPs regularly (Atlassian, Git, and GitHub). And I suppose if GitHub or Atlassian actually hosted first-party MCP endpoints for their services, we probably wouldn't need to self-host?

But I wouldn't want to have a third party host where, all they're doing is just running the npx/uvx command themselves and I still have to give them keys, etc.

At that point, I'd rather just host them locally.

Auth definitely seems like the biggest outstanding question with MCP. Local is a great first solution to make it simple, but maybe OAuth integration in the future makes this easier

Yeah it would have to be some kind of browser redirect dance using stuff like oauth.

The current system of generating keys and setting custom permissions will leave room for error.

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