Building MCP Servers

Syllabus

1. What is MCP?

   We'll explore what the Model Context Protocol is and the main applications for extending AI capabilities.

2. MCP Lifecycle

   Understanding the complete lifecycle of an MCP session from initialization to shutdown, including connection management and error handling.

3. Transports

   STDIO vs HTTP communication methods: how to actually communicate via MCP, exploring the advantages of each transport mechanism.

4. Tools

   Build the most powerful feature of MCP: tools that allow LLMs to autonomously request additional context and perform actions on behalf of users.

5. Resources

   Learn how users can inject context from your MCP server before sending prompts. We'll explore different resource types and create dynamic resources.

6. Prompts

   Help users with pre-prepared prompts they can include with a couple of clicks. Learn how to expose reusable prompts from your MCP server.

7. Completions

   Implement completion functionality for both Resources and Prompts to provide MCP clients with information about what's available on your server.

8. Elicitation

   Handle scenarios where MCP servers need extra user information (like GitHub usernames) by implementing elicitation to ask users directly.

9. Sampling

   Learn when and how to use sampling to ask users for permission to use their LLM to fulfill requests, managing costs and permissions effectively.

10. Authorization

    Secure your MCP server with proper authorization so users can only access their own data, plus deployment strategies for sharing via npm or hosting.

11. Deployment

    MCP servers are stateful by nature so deploying them to serverless needs a bit more carefulness...let's learn the ins and outs of how to deploy an MCP server.