Can’t launch stdio command on remote vscode

[fradav]

For reasons I am completely unaware of, for the past few days, the vscode extension has been unable to launch commands in stdio mode on a remote vscode session via ssh.

No matter what command I specify, it says “command not found.”

What's very strange is that if I'm in a vscode/remotessh window without having specified a working directory, this error disappears.

mcpServers:
  - name: test
    command: /bin/echo
    args:
      - "Hello from test MCP server!"

(I know that this is not a valid MCP command, but that's not the problem here, normal error would be a connection error.)

I tried several servers, a blank vscode profile with just continue.dev and remote ssh extensions, to no avail.
I tried downgrading continue.dev, also.

Rm-rfing the ~/.continue folder doesn’t help.

Any hints ?

[fradav]

Made a PR for fixing this
#10464

[xXMrNidaXx]

Remote stdio command issues on VS Code Remote are common — here's how to fix:

The problem:
Remote extensions run commands on the remote host, but MCP servers might be installed locally.

Solutions:

1. Install MCP server on remote

# On remote machine
npm install -g @modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem

2. Use absolute paths in config

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "filesystem": {
      "command": "/home/user/.nvm/versions/node/v20.0.0/bin/node",
      "args": ["/home/user/.nvm/versions/node/v20.0.0/lib/node_modules/@modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem/dist/index.js"]
    }
  }
}

3. Check PATH on remote

# SSH to remote, verify
which node
which npx

4. Use remote's shell profile

{
  "command": "/bin/bash",
  "args": ["-c", "source ~/.bashrc && npx @mcp/server"]
}

5. Debug with verbose logging

# On remote
DEBUG=* npx @mcp/server 2>&1 | tee /tmp/mcp.log

Common issues:

• Node not in PATH remotely
• Different Node versions
• Permissions on remote paths

We deploy coding tools remotely at RevolutionAI. The absolute paths approach is most reliable.

What's your remote setup — SSH, Docker, or WSL?

[fradav]

Hello,
Thanks for taking your time about this issue. Unfortunately, it seems you are missing the main point.
1. It is not a path env setting issue (even when specifying the full path as simple as /bin/sh).
2. I fixed the issue in the PR  #10464

The main issue is caused by the fact that recent changes in the continue.dev remote handling (probably related to WSL stuff) didn’t translate correctly vscode-remote:// URIs back to file:// URIs which can be passed to the remote own process spawner.

Anyway, thanks again for you time!