New MCP UI is awful, but the bigger picture is more concerning

Ideas Feedback
1

It now take 3-5 clicks to get to the mcp screen I want including having to switch category.
It also seems like many permissions that were whitelisted are reset?

Can you please stop trying to hide everything behind a new menu? It feels endemic lately and just like ■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ has started ever since the SpaceX announcement.

Here’s some design guidelines that apparently need to be given as feedback:
Does it take more effort to get to than before? → that’s bad
Does it reset user settings? → that’s bad
Does it take away a keyboard shortcut? → that’s bad
Does it dumb down the interface that a technical user uses at the expense of speed and convenience? → that’s bad

What’s going on lately?

Edit: apparently you can’t type the word that denotes when a product becomes worse as a way to try to appeal to new users and feels alienating to it’s original core. :poop:

7

I agree word by word! :heart:

10

The per-server enable/disable toggle didn’t go away, it moved. On the Tools & MCP page, click a server’s row (or use the row’s ⋯ → Configure) and the on/off control is in there.

On the permissions resetting: that’s not intended, and nothing you did wrong. Which ones reset exactly, and do you usually have more than one Cursor window open? That’ll tell me whether it’s a persistence issue we’re already tracking.

11

Just one window open.

Issue was with multiple mcp’s, mostly local ones I think.

Fixed it, here’s a report:

Root cause (from logs)

Two issues combined:

  1. ~/.cursor/permissions.json overrides the in-app MCP allowlist. When mcpAllowlist is set in that file, UI “Add to allowlist” writes to a list that isn’t consulted. Logs show User chose ALLOWLIST_TOOL. Adding "notion-biglake:notion-fetch" to allowlist — but the next check still logs needsApproval (not in allowlist) because only permissions.json entries are matched.

  2. Runtime providerIdentifier often doesn’t match allowlist server names. Permission checks use bare names like notion-biglake, google-workspace-opsmachine, current-time — not user-* or project-0-Workspace-* prefixed IDs. Patterns like user-*:* and project-*:* in permissions.json never matched (serverMatches=false in workbench.mcp.allowlist.log).

Repro

  1. Create ~/.cursor/permissions.json with a narrow mcpAllowlist (e.g. only Make servers).
  2. Run Mode: Allowlist.
  3. Use MCPs outside that list (Notion, Gmail, etc.).
  4. Click Allowlist on prompt → tool runs once; next tool or restart → prompts again.

Workaround that worked

{

“mcpAllowlist”: [“*:*”]

}

Then Developer: Reload Window. No need to re-click Allowlist per tool.

Composer’s suggestions for Cursor:

  • When permissions.json owns the allowlist, surface that clearly in the approval UI (e.g. “Managed by permissions.json — UI allowlist not applied”).
  • Document that runtime IDs are often unprefixed bare server names from mcp.json, not user- / project-N- names visible elsewhere.
  • Consider merging UI allowlist into permissions.json, or disabling the Allowlist button when file override is active.