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▲ somnium_sn 5 hours ago

@jspahrsummers and I have been working on this for the last few months at Anthropic. I am happy to answer any questions people might have.

▲rictic 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I just want to say kudos for the design of the protocol. Seems inspired by https://langserver.org/ in all the right ways. Reading through it is a delight, there's so many tasteful little decisions.

One bit of constructive feedback: the TypeScript API isn't using the TypeScript type system to its fullest. For example, for tool providers, you could infer the type of a tool request handler's params from the json schema of the corresponding tool's input schema.

I guess that would be assuming that the model is doing constrained sampling correctly, such that it would never generate JSON that does not match the schema, which you might not want to bake into the reference server impl. It'd mean changes to the API too, since you'd need to connect the tool declaration and the request handler for that tool in order to connect their types.

▲jspahrsummers 2 hours ago | parent [-]

This is a great idea! There's also the matter of requests' result types not being automatically inferred in the SDK right now, which would be great to fix.

Could I convince you to submit a PR? We'd love to include community contributions!

▲computerex an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It seems extremely verbose. Why does the transport mechanism matter? Would have loved a protocol/standard about how best to organize/populate the context. I think MCP touches on that but has too much of other stuff for me.

▲xyc 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Superb work and super promising! I had wished for a protocol like this.

Is there a recommended resource for building MCP client? From what I've seen it just mentions Claude desktop & co are clients. SDK readme seems to cover it a bit but some examples could be great.

▲somnium_sn 33 minutes ago | parent [-]

We are still a bit light on documentation on how to integrate MCP into an application.

The best starting point are the respective client parts in the SDK: https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/typescript-sdk/tree/... and https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/python-sdk/tree/main..., as well as the official specification documentation at https://spec.modelcontextprotocol.io.

If you run into issues, feel free to open a discussion in the respective SDK repository and we are happy to help.

(I've been fairly successful in taking the spec documentation in markdown, an SDK and giving both to Claude and asking questions, but of course that requires a Claude account, which I don't want to assume)

▲thenewwazoo 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

How much did you use LLMs or other AI-like tools to develop the MCP and its supporting materials?

▲throwup238 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Are there any resources for building the LLM side of MCP so we can use the servers with our own integration? Is there a specific schema for exposing MCP information to tool or computer use?

▲somnium_sn 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Both Python and Typescript SDK can be used to build a client. https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/typescript-sdk/tree/... and https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/python-sdk/tree/main.... The TypeScript client is widely used, while the Python side is more experimental.

In addition, I recommend looking at the specification documentation at https://spec.modelcontextprotocol.io. This should give you a good overview of how to implement a client. If you are looking to see an implemented open source client, Zed implements an MCP client: https://github.com/zed-industries/zed/tree/main/crates/conte...

If you have specific questions, please feel free to start a discussion on the respective https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol discussion, and we are happy to help you with integrating MCP.

▲throwup238 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Thanks! Do Anthropic models get extra training/RLHF/fine-tuning for MCP use or is it an extension of tool use?

▲slalani304 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Super cool and much needed open-standard. Wondering how this will work for websites/platforms that don't have exposed API's (LinkedIn, for example)

▲spullara 3 hours ago | parent [-]

you build an MCP that does great calling using your own cookies and browser to get around their scraping protections.

▲kseifried 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

For additional context the PyPi package: https://pypi.org/project/mcp/

And the GitHub repo: https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol

▲s3tt3mbr1n1 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

First, thank you for working on this.

Second, a question. Computer Use and JSON mode are great for creating a quasi-API for legacy software which offers no integration possibilities. Can MCP better help with legacy software interactions, and if so, in what ways?

▲jspahrsummers 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Probably, yes! You could imagine building an MCP server (integration) for a particular piece of legacy software, and inside that server, you could employ Computer Use to actually use and automate it.

The benefit would be that to the application connecting to your MCP server, it just looks like any other integration, and you can encapsulate a lot of the complexity of Computer Use under the hood.

If you explore this, we'd love to see what you come up with!

▲tcdent 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Do you have a roadmap for the future of the protocol?

Is it versioned? ie. does this release constitute an immutable protocol for the time being?

▲jspahrsummers 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You can read how we're implementing versioning here: https://spec.modelcontextprotocol.io/specification/basic/ver...

It's not exactly immutable, but any backwards incompatible changes would require a version bump.

We don't have a roadmap in one particular place, but we'll be populating GitHub Issues, etc. with all the stuff we want to get to! We want to develop this in the open, with the community.

▲bbor 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Followup: is this a protocol yet, or just a set of libraries? This page is empty: https://spec.modelcontextprotocol.io/

▲jspahrsummers 4 hours ago | parent [-]

Sorry, I think that's just the nav on those docs being confusing (particularly on mobile). You can see the spec here: https://spec.modelcontextprotocol.io/specification/

▲bbor 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Ahh thanks! I was gonna say it's broken, but I now see that you're supposed to notice the sidebar changed and select one of the child pages. Would def recommend changing the sidebar link to that path instead of the index -- I would do it myself but couldn't find the sidebar in your doc repos within 5 minutes of looking.

Thanks for your hard work! "LSP for LLMs" is a fucking awesome idea

▲singularity2001 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Is there any way to give a MCP server access for good? Trying out the demo it asked me every single time for permission which will be annoying for longer usage.

▲jspahrsummers 2 hours ago | parent [-]

We do want to improve this over time, just trying to find the right balance between usability and security. Although MCP is powerful and we hope it'll really unlock a lot of potential, there are still risks like prompt injection and misconfigured/malicious servers that could cause a lot of damage if left unchecked.

▲instagary 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

What is a practical use case for this protocol?

▲somnium_sn 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

A few common use cases that I've been using is connecting a development database in a local docker container to Claude Desktop or any other MCP Client (e.g. an IDE assistant panel). I visualized the database layout in Claude Desktop and then create a Django ORM layer in my editor (which has MCP integration).

Internally we have seen people experiment with a wide variety of different integrations from reading data files to managing their Github repositories through Claude using MCP. Alex's post https://x.com/alexalbert__/status/1861079762506252723 has some good examples. Alternatively please take a look at https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/servers for a set of servers we found useful.

▲anaisbetts 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Here's a useful one that I wrote:

https://github.com/anaisbetts/mcp-youtube

Claude doesn't support YouTube summaries. I thought that was annoying! So I added it myself, instead of having to hope Anthropic would do it

▲drdaeman 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Zed editor had just announced support for MSP in some of their extensions, publishing an article showing some possible use cases/ideas: https://zed.dev/blog/mcp

▲ 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]
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▲benocodes 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Seems from the demo videos like Claude desktop app will soon support MCP. Can you share any info on when it will be rolled out?

▲jspahrsummers 5 hours ago | parent [-]

Already available in the latest at https://claude.ai/download!

▲synack 3 hours ago | parent [-]

No Linux version :(

▲startupsfail 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Is it at least somewhat in sync with plans from Microsoft , OpenAI and Meta? And is it compatible with the current tool use API and computer use API that you’ve released?

From what I’ve seen, OpenAI attempted to solve the problem by partnering with an existing company that API-fys everything. This feels looks a more viable approach, if compared to effectively starting from scratch.