Cursor IDE - Can't interact with remote internal server

Support Bug Reports
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1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

Here’s my mcp.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "internal-mcp": {
      "url": "https://internal.tool.company.com/mcp",
    },
  }
}

For some reason, Cursor is able to interact with this through Cursor CLI, but not the IDE.

Steps to Reproduce

Interact with an internal remote MCP using Cursor IDE.

Operating System

MacOS

Current Cursor Version (Menu → About Cursor → Copy)

Version: 2.3.41 (Universal)
VSCode Version: 1.105.1
Commit: 2ca326e0d1ce10956aea33d54c0e2d8c13c58a30
Date: 2026-01-16T19:14:00.150Z (5 days ago)
Electron: 37.7.0
Chromium: 138.0.7204.251
Node.js: 22.20.0
V8: 13.8.258.32-electron.0
OS: Darwin arm64 24.6.0

For AI issues: which model did you use?

GPT 5.2, Sonnet 4.5, Opus 4.5, Composer 1

Does this stop you from using Cursor

Sometimes - I can sometimes use Cursor

3

Hey there!

What do you see in your MCP settings after you’ve added the MCP server to your mcp.json? Do you see the MCP server? Does it have a red/yellow/green indicator?

If you open View > Output in Cursor you should have access to a lot of log files, including those for MCP servers.

Screenshot 2026-01-21 at 22.59.01
Screenshot 2026-01-21 at 22.59.011808×854 141 KB

That’s a helpful place to understand why an MCP server isn’t starting up.

If there are other symptoms (like MCP tools aren’t being triggered when you want them to), please share details here!

4

They’re all green for me, but for some reasons the agent don’t recognize it (so there’s no change in the output log because the agent isn’t using it). I checked in ~/.cursor/projects/User–internal-project/mcps and seems like it didn’t exist there, but it does exist in ~/.cursor/projects/User–internal-project-2/mcps, so I tried asking it to list out the MCP servers and it still doesn’t include the internal remote ones.

5

Are these two seperate workspaces, or do you have a multi-root workspaces open?

6

These are two separate workspaces

8

Thanks @bao!

Interesting that the MCP server is present in one workspace and not the other.

Back to the MCP logs, there’s a specific output channel for MCP filesystem writes. Can you check “Mcp FileSystem Writer” in View > Output and share any errors from the problematic workspace?

Screenshot 2026-02-02 at 14.29.56
Screenshot 2026-02-02 at 14.29.562558×606 281 KB

Please also make sure you’re on version 2.4 now! Lots of fixes related to MCP have been merged since 2.3, including:

  • Race condition fixes in MCP cache refresh that could cause servers to appear connected but tools not discovered
  • Fixes for remote HTTP-based MCP servers not passing URL correctly
9 
2026-02-09 23:21:27.852 [info] Handling ListOfferings action, server stored: false
2026-02-09 23:21:27.852 [info] Server not yet created, returning empty offerings
2026-02-09 23:21:27.958 [info] Handling GetInstructions action
2026-02-09 23:21:27.958 [error] No server info found
2026-02-09 23:21:29.199 [info] Handling ListOfferings action, server stored: false
2026-02-09 23:21:29.199 [info] Server not yet created, returning empty offerings

Sorry for the delay. I updated my Cursor and here are the logs. It’s still not running in the IDE but running fine on Cursor CLI, which is weird.