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Matteo Fabbri

Getting started

One local process, registered in your client, and a solution folder: that is the whole setup. This page covers the install, the optional routing guard and a first session that touches the main tool families.

Requirements

RequirementWhy
.NET 10 SDKThe server targets net10.0 and uses MSBuild and Roslyn to load solutions.
Windows 10/11, Linux or macOSOne installer per platform: install.ps1 on Windows, install.sh on Linux and macOS. The server adapts shell, debugger and profiler to the platform.
An MCP clientZCode, Claude Code, or any client that can start a stdio MCP server.

Visual Studio is not required. Optional integrations light up only when their tool is present: Docker for the docker_* tools, the GitHub CLI for gh_*, and coverlet.collector in your test projects for code coverage.

Install

From a checkout of the repository:

# Windows: ZCode + Claude Code (default)
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File scripts\install.ps1

# Linux / macOS: the same scopes, with the POSIX installer
./scripts/install.sh

The installer builds a Release binary, publishes it under your user profile and registers the server in your client's configuration. Then it installs the routing guard (below). It does not restart the client — MCP configuration is read at session start, so restart it yourself.

Choose a scope

ScopeAvailabilityUse when
all (default)ZCode + Claude Code + the desktop appYou use more than one client
zcodeEvery ZCode session on the machineYou only use ZCode
userEvery folder, globalClaude Code only, everywhere
localOne project folder, privateOne project, without affecting others
projectOne project, sharedYou want teammates to get it through a committed .mcp.json

The routing guard

Registering the server is not enough on its own: a model that has never been told otherwise keeps doing C# work with grep -rn and friends. The optional guard is a pre-tool-use hook that denies read-only shell probes (grep, sed -n, cat, ls, find…) in a folder with a visible .sln/.slnx, and replies with the semantic tool to use instead. Build, test and git commands are never touched, and the run_command tool remains the escape hatch for genuine shell cases. Skip it at install time with -NoHooks.

Verify the connection

Restart the client, check that a VisualMCP server appears with a large tool list, then open a folder that contains a solution and ask the client to call: 

check_solution

The answer reports whether a solution is loaded, its path, the project count, the C# / Visual Basic breakdown and the workspace root in use. Solutions are discovered automatically on first use — you normally do not need to call load_solution yourself.

A first session

A five-minute tour across the main families:

StepToolWhat to look for
1read_project_docsThe solution's README and Markdown, indexed when the solution opened.
2solution_auditWhole-solution health: inspections, diagnostics, complexity hotspots, project graph, first moves.
3find_symbol then read_symbolLocate a type by name, then read its declaration source with line numbers.
4get_diagnosticsCompiler errors and warnings — the IDE Error List.
5simplify_code with dryRun=trueA preview: before/after pairs and a line diff per edit, nothing written.

Then try a question in your own words:

Find every implementation of IOrderService, show me the one with the most dependencies, and tell me whether the interface is used from a background service.

The client should route to find_implementations, get_type_members and find_callers rather than grepping — that is the guard and the tool descriptions doing their job.

Upgrade and uninstall

check_for_update and self_update upgrade from inside the client; or pull the repository and re-run the installer with the same scope. Uninstalling removes the server registration but not the solution's .visualMCP store — delete that folder if you also want to remove the indexes, logs, board and edit history.