Note the need to authenticate to GH Container registry in README

[danseely]

Pull Request Checklist

• I have read and followed the CONTRIBUTING.md guidelines.
• My contribution adds a new instruction, prompt, agent, or skill file in the correct directory.
• The file follows the required naming convention.
• The content is clearly structured and follows the example format.
• I have tested my instructions, prompt, agent, or skill with GitHub Copilot.
• I have run npm start and verified that README.md is up to date.

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Description

When trying to get the local MCP server up & running, both the README.md file here in this repo, as well as the instructions in the announcement on the MS dev blog told me I simply needed to click the Install in VS Code button and start the server, easy-peasy. However when following that path, I saw in the terminal output the MCP server system in VS Code was unable to pull the image, saying access was denied. I first thought the image had been mistakenly set to private and I was just going to pull it locally, then I saw this comment where someone noted they had to first authenticate with the GitHub Container registry in the terminal before being able to pull the image. I did so, and also found that I was able to pull the image and start the server after I did so.

It's entirely possible I'm missing something, but given the lack of other discussion on that issue, I'm assuming this is just a nuance with the GH registry. We don't use the GH registry for our images so I'm not sure if this is the case or what. Either way, If this is the case, I would have been able to get up & running a lot more quickly had this been mentioned.

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Type of Contribution

• New instruction file.
• New prompt file.
• New agent file.
• New collection file.
• New skill file.
• Update to existing instruction, prompt, agent, collection or skill.
• Other (please specify): Update to getting started section of README, without which caused me to be unable to pull the server image.

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Additional Notes

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By submitting this pull request, I confirm that my contribution abides by the Code of Conduct and will be licensed under the MIT License.

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Updates the README’s MCP Server setup guidance to mention GitHub Container Registry authentication when pulling the Docker image.

Changes:

• Adds a note in the MCP Server section indicating users should authenticate to GHCR (docker login ghcr.io) before running the server.

[Copilot]

The README currently states that users "need" to authenticate to the container registry. Pulling from GHCR is often possible anonymously for public images, so this may be misleading/overly strict. Consider rewording to a conditional troubleshooting note (e.g., "If you see an access denied when pulling from ghcr.io, run docker login ghcr.io") and optionally link to GitHub’s GHCR authentication docs / note that a PAT may be required depending on org settings.

Suggested change

To make it easy to add these customizations to your editor, we have created a [MCP Server](https://developer.microsoft.com/blog/announcing-awesome-copilot-mcp-server) that provides a prompt for searching and installing prompts, instructions, agents, and skills directly from this repository. You'll need to have Docker installed and running to run the server. You'll also need to be authenticated with the Container registry via `docker login ghcr.io`.

To make it easy to add these customizations to your editor, we have created a [MCP Server](https://developer.microsoft.com/blog/announcing-awesome-copilot-mcp-server) that provides a prompt for searching and installing prompts, instructions, agents, and skills directly from this repository. You'll need to have Docker installed and running to use the server. If you see an `access denied` error when pulling from `ghcr.io`, run `docker login ghcr.io` and authenticate with a GitHub personal access token if required by your organization settings (see the [GitHub Container registry authentication docs](https://docs.github.com/packages/working-with-a-github-packages-registry/working-with-the-container-registry#authenticating-to-the-container-registry)).

[danseely]

Eh I think this may have been related to my docker login state for ghcr.io being wonky, I'm now able to pull the image after a docker logout ghcr.io. Closing, sorry folks.