Debug mode has unknown tools

[pamelafox]

See all tool names with squiggles:

Maybe a CI check on this repo could check tool names?

[aaronpowell]

I'm not sure how we'd do CI to validate that, since IIRC it would be dependent on what tools are available in the editor, so if you're using an MCP server then it's possible the tools "don't exist" if you didn't include the MCP server.

But as a note, I did pick up run_in_terminal (as an example) on a recent PR as I thought it was named differently, but that is the name of the tool that gets used, see #132 (comment)

So I'm not what's right, do we only go with the names of the tools as they are via the VS Code picker, or do we go with what the GHCP logs report the tool name as? We also must consider the cross-editor experience, does Visual Studio, Xcode, JetBrains IDEs, etc., work.

[pamelafox]

Hm, if a mode requires other MCP servers, perhaps the overview table could list that in a column?
Is it possible to use the same code that validates the chat mode in VS Code in terms of the built-in tools?

If not possible to CI, this issue can just serve as a note that the debug mode needs upgrading.

[aaronpowell]

Hm, if a mode requires other MCP servers, perhaps the overview table could list that in a column?

There's nothing in the front matter today that would support this, so we'd either have to introduce a non-standard field, which I'd really prefer to avoid being non-standard, or introduce an additional file that needs to be edited as part of the PR process, which then adds more overhead to the contribution process.

A better approach is for the prompt to state that it needs something installed to provide the tools, whether it's an extension or MCP server. You can see this in action with the PostgreSQL DBA chat mode.

Is it possible to use the same code that validates the chat mode in VS Code in terms of the built-in tools?

I'm yet to figure out how they do that validation. It's not a YAML schema, since the list of tools is dynamic, so I assume it's something from the language service, which would be very difficult to do automated testing with.

If not possible to CI, this issue can just serve as a note that the debug mode needs upgrading.

If you're actively testing this, please do send through a PR to update it.