Model Context Protocol

Learn Anthropic's open standard, host/client/server architecture, the 6 core MCP primitives, and tools, resources, and prompt capabilities.

Two focused comparisons — MCP vs REST-style APIs (the parameter-change problem MCP's dynamic capability negotiation solves) and MCP vs classic LLM function calling (the M×N integration problem MCP's decoupling solves).

The 3 client-side primitives (Sampling, Roots, Elicitation) and 3 server-side primitives (Tools, Resources, Prompts) that make MCP more than 'just tool calling' — including the model/app/user control framing and a unifying travel-booking example.

Using the open-source mcp-use framework to build an MCP-enabled agent in ~6 lines of code, solve the tool-overload problem with the Server Manager, and create/inspect MCP clients.

Scaffolding an MCP server with mcp-use's project generator, declaratively exposing all 6 core primitives, debugging with the MCP Inspector, adding UI widgets via MCP-UI and OpenAI's Apps SDK, and tunneling for external access.