Getting Started with Model Context Protocol (MCP)
Chapter 1: Architecture and Fundamentals
The MCP Specification Overview
Client-Host-Server Topology
JSON-RPC Message Structure
Transport Mechanisms: Stdio and SSE
Capabilities Negotiation
Hands-on Practice: Environment Setup
Chapter 2: Defining Resources and Prompts
Concept of Resources in MCP
URI Schemes and Patterns
Implementing Synchronous Resource Reads
Resource Subscriptions and Notifications
Structuring Prompts
Hands-on Practice: Building a File Reader Server
Chapter 3: Implementing Tools and Logic
Tool Definition Schema
Input Validation with Pydantic
Executing External API Calls
Error Handling and Reporting
Designing Computed Resources
Hands-on Practice: Creating a Database Tool
Chapter 4: Debugging and Client Integration
Using the MCP Inspector
Analyzing Log Output
Configuration for Claude Desktop
Managing Environment Variables
Handling Connection Lifecycles
Hands-on Practice: End-to-End Integration
Concept of Resources in MCP
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- Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Knowledge-Intensive NLP Tasks, Patrick Lewis, Ethan Perez, Aleksandra Piktus, Fabio Petroni, Vladimir Karpukhin, Naman Goyal, Heinrich Küttler, Mike Lewis, Wen-tau Yih, Tim Rocktäschel, Sebastian Riedel, Douwe Kiela, 2020 Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2020) DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2005.11401 - Describes the architecture and methods for grounding large language models using external knowledge, which is core to the MCP's resource concept.
- Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures, Roy T. Fielding, 2000 PhD Dissertation, University of California, Irvine - Defines the Representational State Transfer (REST) architectural style, introducing concepts of resources and their identification via URIs, which inform MCP's approach.
- Function calling, OpenAI, 2023 (OpenAI) - Provides guidance on how large language models can interact with external functions to perform actions, clarifying the distinction between passive resources and active tools.
- Introduction to Information Retrieval, Christopher D. Manning, Prabhakar Raghavan, and Hinrich Schütze, 2008 (Cambridge University Press) - A comprehensive textbook covering fundamental principles of information retrieval, including indexing, querying, and efficient data access patterns relevant to the 'list then read' workflow.
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