MCP clients fail to start (sentry, context7, playwright, chrome-devtools) — request timed out

Resolved 💬 2 comments Opened Sep 28, 2025 by frndchagas Closed Oct 8, 2025
💡 Likely answer: A maintainer (gpeal, contributor) responded on this thread — see the highlighted reply below.

What version of the VS Code extension are you using?

0.5.15

Which IDE are you using?

VS Code (Remote - WSL)

What platform is your computer?

Linux 5.15.167.4-microsoft-standard-WSL2 x86_64 x86_64

What steps can reproduce the bug?

Open a workspace in VS Code using Remote - WSL.
Ensure Codex extension is enabled.
Trigger any MCP tool (e.g., playwright/chrome-devtools/sentry/context7) from Codex.
Observe startup result in the Codex panel and logs.

MCP client for `sentry` failed to start: request timed out
MCP client for `context7` failed to start: request timed out
MCP client for `playwright` failed to start: request timed out
MCP client for `chrome-devtools` failed to start: request timed out

What is the expected behavior?

MCP clients start successfully and register their tools (playwright, chrome-devtools, sentry, context7), becoming usable from Codex.

What do you see instead?

MCP client for sentry failed to start: request timed out
MCP client for context7 failed to start: request timed out
MCP client for playwright failed to start: request timed out
MCP client for chrome-devtools failed to start: request timed out

Additional information

node -v
v22.20.0
npm -v
10.9.3
python3 --version
Python 3.10.12
google-chrome --version
Google Chrome 130.0.6723.69

Important: they work at CLI.

View original on GitHub ↗

2 Comments

gpeal contributor · 11 months ago

Try increasing your startup timeout

ivan-zakharchuk · 10 months ago

startup_timeout_ms = 20_000 did helped me:

[mcp_servers.chrome-devtools]
command = "npx"
startup_timeout_ms = 20_000
args = ["-y", "chrome-devtools-mcp@latest"]

note: this should be done per each MCP