MCP SSH Tools Not Available in AI Assistant Context (Regression After Latest Update)

Support Bug Reports
,
1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

MCP (Model Context Protocol) tools configured for SSH-MCP are not appearing in the available tools list for the AI assistant, even though the MCP server is properly configured in .cursor/mcp.json. This is a regression issue - SSH MCP worked perfectly before the latest Cursor update. As a senior DevOps engineer, I was successfully using MCP tools to execute commands on remote servers through the AI assistant. However, after the latest update, it stopped working completely.

Steps to Reproduce

  1. Configure SSH-MCP server in .cursor/mcp.json file (configuration provided below)
  2. Restart Cursor (if needed)
  3. Open a chat with the AI assistant
  4. Ask the AI assistant to execute a command on the remote server using MCP tools
  5. The AI assistant reports that MCP tools are not available in its tool list
  6. Only list_mcp_resources and fetch_mcp_resource are available, but not the actual MCP tool execution functions (like exec)

Steps to Reproduce

Steps to Reproduce

  1. Create or edit .cursor/mcp.json file in your workspace root directory
  2. Add the SSH-MCP server configuration (see configuration below)
  3. Save the file
  4. Restart Cursor completely (close all windows and reopen)
  5. Open a new chat with the AI assistant (Cmd/Ctrl + L or click Chat icon)
  6. Ask the AI assistant to execute a command on the remote server, for example:
    • “Use SSH-MCP to execute the command ‘ls’ on the remote server”
    • “Connect to the server via SSH-MCP and run ‘pwd’”
    • “Use MCP tools to list files in the home directory on the remote server”
  7. Observe that the AI assistant responds that MCP tools are not available
  8. The AI assistant will report that only list_mcp_resources and fetch_mcp_resource are available, but not the actual MCP tool execution functions (like exec or mcp_ssh-mcp_exec)

SSH-MCP Package Information:
The ssh-mcp package is an npm package that implements a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server for secure remote command execution via SSH.

Expected Behavior

After configuring SSH-MCP in .cursor/mcp.json and restarting Cursor, the AI assistant should have access to MCP tools from the ssh-mcp server. Specifically:

  1. MCP tools should be automatically available to the AI assistant when configured in .cursor/mcp.json
  2. The exec tool (or similarly named tool like mcp_ssh-mcp_exec, mcp_kwork-ai-gemini-ssh-mcp_exec) should appear in the AI assistant’s available tools list
  3. The AI assistant should be able to execute commands on the remote server through MCP tools without needing to use the local terminal
  4. When asked to execute a command, the AI should successfully call the MCP tool and return the command output from the remote server

Example of expected successful interaction:

  • User: “Use SSH-MCP to execute ‘ls’ on the remote server”
  • AI: [Calls MCP exec tool with command=“ls”]
  • AI: “Here are the files in the remote server’s home directory: [output from remote server]”

Operating System

Windows 10/11

Version Information

cursor ide 2.4.21

For AI issues: which model did you use?

Auto

Does this stop you from using Cursor

Yes - Cursor is unusable

How to use MCP Tools (like SQLcl-MCP) in Composer Agent Mode?
3

Hey, thanks for the report. This is a known issue with MCP tool discovery, the team is aware and looking into it.

What’s happening: MCP servers connect fine and the tools do get registered (you can see it in the logs), but the agent can’t see them. Based on other reports, this bug showed up sometime between 2.3.34 and 2.3.41.

Try these workarounds:

  1. Start a new chat and ask: “list all MCP tools you have access to”
    After that, it may start working in the same session.

  2. Downgrade to 2.3.34 or 2.3.35. Many users confirm it works there. Older versions are here: Downloads | Cursor Docs

If the workaround doesn’t help, can you share the Request ID from the broken chat (three dots in the top right of the chat > Copy Request ID). That’ll help the team debug.

Related threads with the same issue:

Let me know if the workaround doesn’t help or if you need more info.

4

This topic was automatically closed 22 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.