PactMate: Helping You Make a Pact… Without Breaking One [SmartBear MCP Hackathon]

We’ve been experimenting with an idea called PactMate, a new way to bring SmartBear MCP capabilities directly into the developer’s daily workflow inside VSCode. The concept is simple: make contract testing faster, smarter, and more contextual, without leaving your editor.

The Problem

The SmartBear MCP server is powerful on its own, but like many standalone tools, it doesn’t always know where it’s being used. It doesn’t see your project structure, the framework you’re coding in, or the context of the file you’re editing.

That lack of awareness can lead to some frustrating moments. The server might generate test snippets that don’t match your framework, or produce long, unnecessary code blocks when you just needed a single test example. Sometimes it even “hallucinates” results that don’t make sense in context.

For engineers working inside real projects, this creates friction. The potential is there, but it needs to be grounded in the actual coding environment.

The Solution

That’s where PactMate comes in. It’s a VSCode extension that connects directly to the SmartBear MCP server but gives it context from your current workspace. With access to the editor environment and VSCode APIs, PactMate helps MCP understand what you’re working on and respond in a much more useful way.

Here’s what it unlocks:

• Inline Pact test suggestions and completions that appear right where you’re writing code.
• A quick test viewer to browse and open Pact tests related to the file you’re editing.
• Context-aware commands to generate or review relevant test snippets without leaving your flow.
• Small-chunk processing that lets MCP analyze only the portion of the file you’re focused on.
• Fast Pact test discovery across your repo, so you can instantly locate existing contract tests.

In short, PactMate bridges the gap between intelligent tooling and developer context, combining the best of both worlds.

Why It Matters

PactMate prototype turns the MCP server from a general-purpose assistant into a true in-editor testing companion. It delivers suggestions that make sense for your project’s setup and coding style, and it keeps everything neatly contained to what’s relevant.

This improves accuracy, reduces noise, and speeds up how developers write and refine Pact tests. Over time, success will be measured by how often inline suggestions get accepted, how precise the generated tests are, and how much time it saves compared to traditional workflows.

But most importantly, it keeps developers in flow, testing smarter without ever leaving their IDE.

Get Involved

We'd love to get feedback from the community on this idea. Would you find value in having Pact-aware MCP suggestions directly in VSCode? What other integrations or shortcuts would make contract testing even smoother for your team?