mcp-sync: Unified MCP Server Config Management Across Editors

During a rapid MCP server stack update, a missing comma in a Windsurf config caused the server to silently fail, exposing a silent configuration drift problem across three editors—Claude Desktop, Cursor, and Windsurf.

After rotating an API key two weeks later, the same issue recurred in five different editor config files, each with its own JSON quirks, highlighting the lack of a unified source of truth for MCP server definitions. The team built mcp‑sync to solve this by introducing a single .mcp.json file that holds all server definitions and three commands—export, diff, and sync—to pull, compare, and push configurations.

mcp‑sync uses a strict merge pattern that preserves non‑MCP settings, and a local encrypted vault (AES‑256‑GCM, machine‑bound key) stores API keys so that the .mcp.json can be committed without secrets. The diff command performs canonical comparison, ignoring field ordering and vault references, and exits non‑zero on drift, making it CI‑friendly. Sync adds missing servers without wiping existing editor settings, and export pulls the current state from all editors into the single file. The tool also handles connector‑specific translations, such as converting url to serverUrl for Windsurf and servers to mcpServers for VS Code. By centralizing MCP configuration, mcp‑sync eliminates manual edits and reduces silent failures across development environments.