Build Your Own MCP Server · 20 min · MCP Python SDK · Claude Desktop · uv
The MCP Protocol — What It Is and Why It Matters
MCP isn't a new way to call an API — it's a standard so you write the tool once and every MCP-compatible AI can use it.
Hiring signal: MCP is the fastest-growing open standard in AI tooling — Claude, Cursor, and Windsurf all speak it. Being able to stand up a server that exposes your own systems to any of them is a durable, transferable skill.
What you will learn
- Explain MCP's client-host-server architecture in your own words
- Distinguish stdio and SSE transport and know which one this course uses and why
- Configure Claude Desktop to run an existing MCP server and read its logs
Introduction
By the end of this course you'll have a running MCP server with 5 tools, a resource, and a prompt template, registered with Claude Desktop — something you can hand to a teammate as a folder and a config snippet, and it just works on their machine too. Today you're not writing any of it. You're getting someone else's server running, so the protocol stops being an abstract diagram and becomes something you've watched work.
What You're Building
Nothing new gets written today — you configure Claude Desktop to run a reference filesystem MCP server (shipped by the MCP project itself), verify it works, and read the actual JSON-RPC traffic between Claude and the server. Lesson 2 is where you write your first tool.
Unlock the full lesson
You've read the first 2 sections. The rest of this lesson covers The three-way architecture, and why it exists, Two transports, and which one you'll use, Tools, resources, prompts — the three primitives, Read the logs — plus a hands-on lab, quiz, and project artifact.
Create a free account to unlock Phase 0 and Phase 1 of every course — no credit card.
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