# swiss_meteo_mcp
This is an experimental project to learn about MCP + GitHub Copilot, using the latter to create the MCP server code and then access it through the Chat funciton of copilot. I also managed to use the MCP server through Amazon Q chat (see further below).
## Journey
* I prompted the goal as stated above for an initial pass.
* After `uvicorn` was used wrongly in the `.vscode/mcp.json` config, which is for http endpoints, not for `stdio` ones, debugging back and forth with copilot fixed the issue and I had a running MCP server scaffolded (that were unrelated to swiss meteo):
* Availabilities:
* prompt to summarise text, which could either be detailed or brief (`/mcp.swiss-meteo-mcp.summarize-notes `).
* tool to add a note (`#add-note`).
* resource to list notes, not accessible explicitly (just implicitly) through copilot chat.
* One can see below that it works as expected, with autocompletion, after the server was started:
* I wanted to add a tool to get the current weather from swiss meteo (hence the name of the package), but there is no official API I found out with copilot chat.
* I then asked for a few alternatives and decided to go with `wttr.io` and let copilot implement it.
* I also factored out some functionality so I could let copilot write a simple unit test that worked.
* So my own new tool is `#get-temperature`
# Lessons Learned
## in general
* Building an MPC server seems a standard task. GitHub Copilot managed kind of well, but not flawless.
* Integration of mcp servers is working well with copilot it seems.
* Invocation of tools and resources is possible implicitly or explicitly. When used, it is communicated transparently in the copilot chat.
* MCP servers can run locally (with like `uv run` or container isolation) or remotely.
* MCP prompts are really just parametrised snippets.
* resources are read-only info.
* tools are supposed to have side effects.
## GitHub Copilot
* can also write git commit messages (not so impressive)
* used 20% of free code suggestions in one day (and might be used for retraining).
## Amazon Q
* Can discover MCP server in `.vscode/mcp.json` in own project, start it when a relevant question is asked in the Q chat and use the tool to answer the question, but using Python source package not MCP tool over `stdio`.
* to use the mcp server outside the source repo, we had to put the `mcp.json` file into the amazon q global directory at `~/.aws/amazonq/mcp/mcp.json` and rename the `servers:` key to `mcpServers:` for Q to recognise it:
```python
{
"mcpServers": {
"swiss-meteo-mcp3": {
"type": "stdio",
# not portable, most mcp servers use uvx run [pypiname.module@latest] to install on fly and run
"command": "/Users/lorenz/git/swiss_meteo_mcp/.venv/bin/python",
"args": [
"-m",
"swiss_meteo_mcp.server"
]
}
}
}
```
## Other
* drag and drop screenshot into VS Code editor works well
