Phase 1 · Building with LLMs · Tools & agents
Model Context Protocol
A standard way to plug tools and data into any AI app.
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Why it matters
Without a standard, every AI app needs its own custom integration for every tool: your CRM for Claude, your CRM again for an IDE, again for a support bot. The Model Context Protocol is an open standard (introduced by Anthropic in 2024 and now supported widely) that lets a tool be written once as an MCP server and used by any MCP-capable app. When a vendor says "we have an MCP server", this lesson is what that means.
What you'll be able to do
- Explain what problem MCP solves and the roles of host, client and server
- Read and write MCP's JSON-RPC messages: initialize, tools/list and tools/call
- Convert an MCP server's tools into Claude tool definitions
- Judge whether an MCP server is safe to connect
Before this lesson
Next in this phase: Agent design patterns