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Where do I get started with MCP? I’m all in, but kinda…confused? A REST API makes sense to me…but this is apparently significantly different and more useful. W

Where do I get started with MCP? I’m all in, but kinda…confused? A REST API makes sense to me…but this is apparently significantly different and more useful. What’s the best way to think about MCP compared to a traditional API? Where do I get started building one? Are there good examples to look at?

airstrike 1y ago
It's kinda like a REST API in which the schema tags along with the requests. The use case in AI is sort of reversed such that the code runs on your computer
randomcatuser 1y ago
Yeah, one way to think about it is like... protocols restrict things, so that people can expect the same stuff. With a traditional API, people can build it any way they want, which means you (the client) need API docs. With MCP, you literally restrict it to 2 things: get the list of tools, and call the tool (using the schema you got above). Thus the key insight is just about: let's add 1 more endpoint that lists the APIs you have, so that robots can find it. Example time: - Build an MCP server (equivalent of "intro to flask 101"): https://developers.cloudflare.com/agents/guides/remote-mcp-server/ https://developers.cloudflare.com/agents/guides/remote-mcp-s... - Now you can add it to Claude Desktop/Cursor and see what it does - That's as far as i got lol
stefan_ 1y ago
I think I'm living in a parallel universe. You can tell an LLM in a million ways what "tools" it can "call". Anthropic & co standardized a shitty variant so they have an uniform way of letting others play in their sandbox, until they invariably decide which of these things make sense and then usurp them in a desperate way out of the commodity rat race to the bottom.
ashwinsundar 1y ago
Start by reading the documentation - https://modelcontextprotocol.io/introduction https://modelcontextprotocol.io/introduction Then use FastMCP to write an MCP server in Python - https://github.com/jlowin/fastmcp https://github.com/jlowin/fastmcp Finally, hook it up to an LLM client. It’s dead simple to do in Claude Code, create an .mcp.json file and define the server’s startup command.
namtab00 1y ago
it's not a recipe, but I found this sufficiently interesting, at least for grasping the conceptual differences. https://youtu.be/eeOANluSqAE https://youtu.be/eeOANluSqAE
Rury 1y ago
Do you know WSDL? If you do, it's kind of the same concept behind consuming WSDL, just for AI applications...

airstrike 1y ago

It's kinda like a REST API in which the schema tags along with the requests. The use case in AI is sort of reversed such that the code runs on your computer

randomcatuser 1y ago

Yeah, one way to think about it is like... protocols restrict things, so that people can expect the same stuff. With a traditional API, people can build it any way they want, which means you (the client) need API docs. With MCP, you literally restrict it to 2 things: get the list of tools, and call the tool (using the schema you got above). Thus the key insight is just about: let's add 1 more endpoint that lists the APIs you have, so that robots can find it. Example time: - Build an MCP server (equivalent of "intro to flask 101"): https://developers.cloudflare.com/agents/guides/remote-mcp-server/ https://developers.cloudflare.com/agents/guides/remote-mcp-s... - Now you can add it to Claude Desktop/Cursor and see what it does - That's as far as i got lol

stefan_ 1y ago

I think I'm living in a parallel universe. You can tell an LLM in a million ways what "tools" it can "call". Anthropic & co standardized a shitty variant so they have an uniform way of letting others play in their sandbox, until they invariably decide which of these things make sense and then usurp them in a desperate way out of the commodity rat race to the bottom.

ashwinsundar 1y ago

Start by reading the documentation - https://modelcontextprotocol.io/introduction https://modelcontextprotocol.io/introduction Then use FastMCP to write an MCP server in Python - https://github.com/jlowin/fastmcp https://github.com/jlowin/fastmcp Finally, hook it up to an LLM client. It’s dead simple to do in Claude Code, create an .mcp.json file and define the server’s startup command.

namtab00 1y ago

it's not a recipe, but I found this sufficiently interesting, at least for grasping the conceptual differences. https://youtu.be/eeOANluSqAE https://youtu.be/eeOANluSqAE

Rury 1y ago

Do you know WSDL? If you do, it's kind of the same concept behind consuming WSDL, just for AI applications...