One MCP Configuration for Codex, Claude, Cursor, and Copilot with chezmoi

If you use multiple coding agents across multiple machines, MCP configuration drift is unavoidable unless you make one file the source of truth. This guide shows a practical setup for: Codex Claude Code Cursor GitHub Copilot (including VS Code and Copilot coding agent scenarios) The core idea is simple: Keep one canonical MCP manifest in your chezmoi source state. Generate each tool's native config format from that manifest. Let chezmoi manage symlinks/templates and machine-specific values. Why this works All four tools model MCP servers with the same conceptual fields: Server name Transport type ( stdio vs remote HTTP/SSE-like) Command + args + env for local servers URL + headers/auth for remote servers What differs is file location and schema shape. So instead of manually editing four formats, you maintain one normalized model and project it into each target file. What each tool expects today Codex Codex stores MCP inside config.toml , typically at ~/.codex/config.toml , with optiona