Workshop resources used for the MCP workshop at the LEGO DevCon 25 in Billund.
Presenter: Bas Peters (@bas), Solutions Engineer at GitHub.
- What is MCP?
- Showcase MCP
- Hack + Q&A
- Everyone leaves with a working MCP Server
MCP (Model Context Protocol) is an open-source standard for connecting AI applications to external systems.
Some examples include:
- GitHub MCP Server - Connect to GitHub repositories, issues, and pull requests
- Playwright MCP Server - End-to-end testing for modern web apps
- Context7 MCP Server - Semantic search across documentation and codebases
The key participants in the MCP architecture are:
| Participant | Description |
|---|---|
| MCP Host | The AI application that coordinates and manages one or multiple MCP clients |
| MCP Client | A component that maintains a connection to an MCP server and obtains context from an MCP server for the MCP host to use |
| MCP Server | A program that provides context to MCP clients |
Communication: Through stdio or HTTP streaming using JSON RPC as a protocol language for messaging.
MCP servers can provide three main types of capabilities (primitives):
| Capability | Description |
|---|---|
| 📄 Resources | File-like data that can be read by clients (like API responses or file contents) |
| 🔧 Tools | Functions that can be called by the LLM |
| 📝 Prompts | Pre-written templates that help users accomplish specific tasks |
- Notifications: Enable MCP servers to provide real-time updates to connected clients
- Logging: Send log messages to clients for debugging and monitoring purposes
- Pagination: Handle paging
MCP servers can provide additional client capabilities:
| Capability | Description |
|---|---|
| 🗂️ Roots | Specify which files servers can access, guiding them to relevant directories while maintaining security boundaries |
| 🧠 Sampling | Request LLM completions through the client, enabling an agentic workflow |
| ❓ Elicitations | Request specific information from users during interactions |
To inspect and debug your MCP server you can use the inspector, for example for Node.js:
npx @modelcontextprotocol/inspector node dist/index.js stdioGet one of the starter repositories (see Resources) and then folow the README to install and run the server and to run the examples. There is a resource, a tool, and a prompt example included.
Explore the source code. Open the repository in VS Code and ask Copilot to explain the code and start making some changes. You could start by adding a few improvements like for example name validation for the say-hello tool or add a resource that can be used to help you to greet people in different countries.
The starter repositories might have to bumped to the latest SDK version.
The Everything Server provides a showcase of all capabilities. A great start to learn more about cpesific MCP features.
- Share your ideas
- Find partners (optional)
- Use one of the starter repositories
- Use GitHub Copilot
- Add some resources and implement a resource listing tool
- Connect to some service or API
- Build something creative!
Workshop materials for MCP (Model Context Protocol) development