How to convert a registry server.json into client configuration files (e.g. mcp.json, ~/.claude.json, .cursor/mcp.json)

[lujin3]

Hi team 👋,

I'm trying to understand how to convert a registry server.json (from the MCP registry format) into the configuration format used by different MCP-compatible clients — for example:

VS Code / GitHub Copilot Chat: mcp.json

Claude Code: ~/.claude.json

Cursor: .cursor/mcp.json

Currently, the registry server.json defines fields. However, it’s not immediately clear how these map to the client configuration structure (e.g. the "type", "command", "args", "env", "url", "headers" fields in client configs).

Could you clarify:

Is there an official or recommended mapping between the server.json schema and the client configuration schema?

Are there any tools or scripts (official or community-maintained) to automate this conversion?

For remote servers (e.g. using sse or websocket), how should authentication headers or environment variables be handled in client configs?

An example mapping between a sample server.json and equivalent mcp.json / ~/.claude.json / .cursor/mcp.json entries would be especially helpful 🙏

Thanks in advance for your guidance — this would make it much easier to integrate registry MCP servers into different clients!

[tadasant]

I think the reality here is that we will not try to provide guidance on this until something like this standardization proposal lands: https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/modelcontextprotocol/issues/292

Until then, we don't have influence over how VS Code, Cursor, etc manage their config files and so it would be a moving goalpost to try to provide formal guidance.