How to generate PowerPoint slides in VS Code with GitHub Copilot (MCP setup guide, 2026)

One click connects VS Code to slideforge.dev and gives Copilot agent mode a real PowerPoint engine. VS Code signs you in over OAuth on first use — no API key, no secret in a config file — and renders the result inline in the chat: slide thumbnails, a per-field fidelity line, and a Download .pptx button. This guide covers the one-click install, the mcp.json config, team setup through the repo, and the two config mistakes that cause almost every failure.

Opens VS Code and adds the server in one step. Prefer to see what it writes? The manual config is four lines, below.

What you need first

• VS Code 1.101 or later (remote MCP with OAuth is native from there; current builds are far past it).
• GitHub Copilot with agent mode — the MCP tools are called from the Chat view with Agent selected.
• No SlideForge account needed up front — the OAuth sign-in creates one, and it starts with 60 free slides.
• Using Cursor, Codex, or Claude Code instead? Each has its own guide: Cursor, Codex CLI, Claude Code.

Method 1 — one-click install

Click Add SlideForge to VS Code. The link resolves into VS Code's own vscode:mcp/install handler, which shows you the exact server entry before adding it:

{ "type": "http", "url": "https://api.slideforge.dev/mcp/", "name": "slideforge" }

Confirm, and the server is registered. The first tool call triggers the OAuth sign-in.

Method 2 — mcp.json by hand

Open the Command Palette and run MCP: Open User Configuration, then add:

{
  "servers": {
    "slideforge": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://api.slideforge.dev/mcp/"
    }
  }
}

Method 3 — commit it for the whole team (.vscode/mcp.json)

The same JSON in .vscode/mcp.json at the workspace root means everyone who clones the repo gets the server:

{
  "servers": {
    "slideforge": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://api.slideforge.dev/mcp/"
    }
  }
}

The file carries no secret — each developer authorizes individually with OAuth on first use, after confirming VS Code's trust prompt for workspace-defined servers.

Verify the connection

Command Palette → MCP: List Servers. You should see slideforge running with its tools available. You can also type code --add-mcp users: the CLI accepts the same server JSON if you prefer scripting the setup.

In the Chat view, the tools icon lists what the agent can call — create_slide, create_deck, browse_catalog and the rest should be there.

Generate your first slide

In Copilot Chat with Agent selected, ask in plain language with real values:

Make a KPI dashboard slide for our Q3 board update:
ARR $4.2M, up 18% QoQ. Net revenue retention 112%.
Logo churn 1.4%. Cash runway 19 months.

On the first call, VS Code opens a browser tab to sign in — that is the one-time OAuth step. Then Copilot picks the form, calls create_slide, and the chat shows the full result card: a slide thumbnail, the fidelity line (verbatim / AI-completed / truncated counts), a Download .pptx button, and your remaining balance.

Open the file and click on $4.2M — the cursor lands in an editable text box, because it is one. Nothing is rasterized.

The fidelity report — why this is safe to automate

Every response carries a machine-readable account of what happened to your content, field by field: whether each value was bound verbatim (copied exactly as supplied) or model-completed(filled in because you did not supply it), plus any warnings the renderer raised. When a generative tool writes your board slide, “ARR $4.2M” and “ARR ~$4M” are both plausible outputs and you cannot tell which you got without reading every slide. Here the number you sent is the number on the slide, and the response says so explicitly.

Two consequences worth knowing: a slide that comes back with a blocking defect is not billed, and rendering is deterministic — re-sending an identical input is free and produces a byte-identical deck.

What this is for in an editor

Common mistakes and troubleshooting

Pricing

Frequently asked questions

Canonical: slideforge.dev/guides/vscode-powerpoint-mcp. SlideForge is published by Smart Data Brokers GmbH, Zurich. Visual Studio Code and GitHub Copilot are products of Microsoft and GitHub; SlideForge is an independent MCP server and is not affiliated with either.