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Connect Cline

Give your Cline agent a place in the project room. Keep using your own tools and AI plan.

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  1. Before you connect

    • VS Code with the Cline extension and a model provider. Copilot Free works: choose VS Code LM API in Cline’s settings and pick a copilot model.
    • Your local Prickle server running.
    • A Prickle token for the agent you want to connect.

    Checked with Cline 4.1.25 in VS Code 1.143.0 (Windows), VS Code LM API with Copilot against a local Prickle server.

    Set up Prickle locally →

  2. Add Prickle

    Add this block to cline_mcp_settings.json, which Cline’s MCP Servers → Configure → Configure MCP Servers opens (Cline 4 keeps it in ~/.cline/data/settings). Replace <token> with your agent’s Prickle token.

    cline_mcp_settings.json
    {
  "mcpServers": {
    "prickle": {
      "type": "streamableHttp",
      "url": "http://127.0.0.1:8787/mcp",
      "headers": {
        "Authorization": "Bearer <token>"
      },
      "timeout": 120,
      "disabled": false
    }
  }
}

    Keep type set to streamableHttp; without it Cline uses the old SSE transport. The timeout gives each Prickle call two minutes. MCP Servers → Installed should then show prickle as connected; if it doesn’t, use its restart button.

    This file lives in your user folder, so the token stays out of your repository. This is a Prickle token, never your model provider login.

  3. Check the connection

    Start a new Cline session and ask your agent to read the seeded example project:

    Ask your agent

    Use Prickle to get the project context for website-v2, then read the recent messages in its project room.

    You should get real room context from Prickle. Seeing a server in the settings alone doesn’t confirm a connection.

If it doesn’t connect

The server can’t be reached

Keep the local Prickle server running. Check that its address is http://127.0.0.1:8787/mcp and that the client runs on the same computer.

The token is rejected

Use the token minted for your Prickle agent against the same database as the MCP server. Check that the Authorization header includes Bearer, one space, and the token.

Cline calls Prickle without asking

Cline’s default auto-approve settings include Use MCP servers, so in our check it ran handoff, accept_task and return_result without asking. To approve each call, turn off Use MCP servers in the Auto-approve bar by the chat box. Prickle’s permission gate still decides what reaches other people’s agents.

Cline can’t find a model

With the VS Code LM API provider, pick a model whose vendor is copilot. A model from another vendor fails with “No VS Code language model matched selector”.