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Install Browser MCP for Zed

Give Zed's agent control of your real, already-logged-in Chrome - about 90 seconds, four steps. Your cookies, your sessions, your 2FA, instead of a blank browser that hits every login wall as a stranger.

The whole thing, in four steps

1 - Install the Chrome extension. One click from the Chrome Web Store.

2 - Open Zed's settings. Command Palette → agent: open settings → MCP Servers → Add Server → Add Local Server. Or edit settings.json directly.

3 - Add the server. Zed calls them context_servers, not mcpServers:

{
  "context_servers": {
    "browser-mcp": {
      "source": "custom",
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@agent360/browser-mcp@latest"],
      "env": {}
    }
  }
}

4 - Say this, to check it worked. In the agent panel:

Take a screenshot of my current Chrome tab.

You get an image back instead of "I don't have browser access". That's it - you're running.

Two things that fail silently in Zed

"source": "custom" is required. Leave it out and Zed skips the server without an error message. You get no tools and no explanation. This is the one line people delete when they tidy up a config.

Zed never says "stdio". Their UI and docs only talk about Local Server and Remote Server. If you go looking for a transport dropdown with "stdio" in it, you will not find one - a local server with command and args is stdio.

Where the settings file actually lives

macOS~/.config/zed/settings.json
Linux / FreeBSD$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/zed/settings.json (usually the same)
Windows%APPDATA%\Zed\settings.json
Per project.zed/settings.json in the project root

These come from Zed's own source (crates/paths/src/paths.rs), not from a blog post. Several third-party guides list ~/Library/Application Support/Zed/ or ~/.zed/ for macOS. Those are wrong - Application Support holds Zed's data directory, which is a different thing.

Things worth knowing before you hit them

No restart needed for tool changes. Zed handles the notifications/tools/list_changed notification and reloads the tool list on its own. Settings hot-reload too - except when the settings file is a symlink, which is a known bug on their tracker.

Every tool call asks you by default. agent.tool_permissions.default is "confirm". You can set it to "allow", but a browser tool that can read any page you are signed in to is a poor first candidate for that.

Tool selection varies by model. Zed's own wording: "How reliably MCP tools get called can vary from model to model." Naming the server in your prompt helps.

Frequently asked questions

Why do I get no tools and no error? Almost always the missing "source": "custom". Add it and reload.

Does Zed run on Windows? Yes, and the settings path is %APPDATA%\Zed\settings.json.

Is there a limit on servers or tools? Nothing documented. Many servers at once will fill the model's context with tool definitions, which is a general MCP cost rather than a Zed one.

Why does the extension show nothing after step 3? The server only takes a port the first time real work arrives. Ask for a screenshot and the badge appears.

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