MCP Playground 🧪

My notes and code for Model Context Protocol (MCP).

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What is MCP?

Model Context Protocol — open standard by Anthropic for connecting AI apps to external tools & data.

USB-C for AI — one protocol, many integrations.

Problem it solves

Without MCP → every AI app needs custom integration for each tool → M×N problem. With MCP → standard interface → M+N solution.

WITHOUT MCP:                    WITH MCP:
┌─────────┐                     ┌─────────┐
│ Claude  │──┐                  │ Claude  │──┐
│ ChatGPT │──┼── custom ──┐     │ ChatGPT │  ├── MCP ──┐
│ Cursor  │──┘    APIs    │     │ Cursor  │──┘         │
└─────────┘               │     └─────────┘            │
      ↕ M×N connections   │           ↕ M+N            │
┌──────────┐              │     ┌──────────────┐       │
│ Slack    │──────────────┘     │  MCP Server  │───────┘
│ GitHub   │                    │  (Slack,     │
│ Database │                    │   GitHub,    │
└──────────┘                    │   DB, etc.)  │
                                └──────────────┘

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Architecture

┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│              HOST (e.g. Claude Desktop)         │
│                                                 │
│  ┌──────────────┐    ┌──────────────┐           │
│  │  MCP Client  │    │  MCP Client  │    ...    │
│  └──────┬───────┘    └──────┬───────┘           │
└─────────┼───────────────────┼───────────────────┘
          │ (transport)       │ (transport)
    ┌─────▼──────┐      ┌────-▼──────┐
    │ MCP Server │      │ MCP Server │
    │  (local)   │      │  (remote)  │
    └────────────┘      └────────────┘

Component	Role
Host	AI app that wants to use external tools/data
Client	Lives inside host, 1:1 connection to a server
Server	Exposes tools, resources, prompts via MCP
Transport	How client ↔ server talk (stdio, HTTP+SSE)

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3 Core Primitives

Primitive	What it does	Think of it as
🔧 Tools	Functions AI can call	POST endpoints
📄 Resources	Data AI can read	GET endpoints
💬 Prompts	Templates AI can use	Reusable prompt snippets

Tools = actions, Resources = data, Prompts = templates

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Index

Folder	Concept
hello-mcp-server/	First MCP server + tool
tools/	Tools deep dive
resources/	Resources
prompts/	Prompt templates
transport/	stdio vs SSE vs Streamable HTTP
client/	MCP client
real-world-server/	Full-featured server

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Quick Start

cd hello-mcp-server
uv run server.py

Stack

Python + mcp SDK + uv