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VS Code and GitHub Copilot with Keeptrusts

Port 41002 is an LLM API endpoint, not a forward HTTP proxy. Do not place it in http.proxy, HTTP_PROXY, or HTTPS_PROXY. Those settings make Copilot expect CONNECT/forward-proxy behavior that the Keeptrusts gateway does not implement.

VS Code offers two supported Keeptrusts connection paths.

Add Keeptrusts MCP tools​

Create .vscode/mcp.json. VS Code uses servers, not Cursor's mcpServers shape, and can store the token through a password input:

{
  "inputs": [
    {
      "type": "promptString",
      "id": "keeptrusts-token",
      "description": "Keeptrusts MCP client token",
      "password": true
    }
  ],
  "servers": {
    "keeptrusts": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://<published-hostname>/mcp",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer ${input:keeptrusts-token}"
      }
    }
  }
}

Run MCP: List Servers to start the server and inspect its output. See the VS Code MCP guide for current trust and organization controls.

Route VS Code chat through a custom endpoint​

VS Code's current Custom Endpoint model provider can present Chat Completions, Responses, or Messages API choices. For a governed Keeptrusts IDE path, select Chat Completions or Responses: those routes execute the documented input and output policy chain. The public Messages route has a weaker auth/billing/routing-only governance boundary, and the native Anthropic provider adapter is not adoption-ready.

Open Chat: Manage Language Models, choose Add Models → Custom Endpoint, and configure the Keeptrusts URL, client token, model ID, API type, and capabilities.

For an OpenAI-compatible model, use the exact gateway route required by the editor's configuration UI, such as:

http://127.0.0.1:41002/v1/chat/completions

VS Code's BYOK custom models apply to chat and utility tasks. GitHub documents that semantic search, inline suggestions, and some embedding-backed features still require GitHub services. See the VS Code language-model guide for the current boundary.

What is not governed​

MCP does not reroute GitHub-hosted Copilot model traffic, and adding a custom chat model does not imply that inline suggestions use it. Keeptrusts can govern only requests that actually target its endpoint.

Verify with kt events tail --since 10m --follow while the intended custom model is selected.

Next steps​