https://gitlab.com/jakubrojicek11/sentinel-ir-mcp/-/blob/09b61d9dc1b90f3ebc7a37be0493d951249453cf/.github/workflows/windows.yml

description: "Slow CI is only the beginning. Shell differences, executable resolution, special characters in paths, and MCP client configurations create a hidden compatibility tax for developers building AI tools for Windows."

series: "The Windows Development Challenge"

The Windows Tax: Why Building AI Developer Tools for Windows Is Harder Than It Looks 🪟

In "Part 1, we reduced our Windows CI/CD pipeline from 13.6 minutes to 2 minutes and 44 seconds" ( https://dev.to/jackymencz/how-we-slashed-our-windows-cicd-pipeline-from-14-minutes-to-under-3-2id0 ).

That solved one problem: waiting for tests.

But it exposed another problem that developers working on AI infrastructure know very well.

Getting your software to actually work on Windows is an entirely different engineering challenge.

Writing an MCP server is one thing.…