Understanding MCP Basics

00:00 MCP stands for Model Context Protocol. But what does that even mean? Think about QR codes for a second. QR codes are typically black and white images that encode data, for example, URLs to websites.

00:14 If you open a QR code generator, you type in some data and you get an image out. The image isn’t generated arbitrarily. There’s a set of rules that determine exactly how a URL becomes a QR code.

00:27 On the other hand, if you grab your phone, you open the camera and you scan a QR code, your phone is also aware of how QR codes work and then is able to decode those black and white squares and turn the image into a URL.

00:41 And there’s an analogy here between QR codes and MCP, the Model Context Protocol, and MCP servers and MCP clients, which are the things you’re going to learn about in this course.

00:53 Specifically, the MCP server, you can think of it as the tool that generates the QR code. In a way, the MCP server is aware of these rules that you can use to expose LLMs to tools, resources, and prompts.

01:09 You’ll understand what tools, resources, and prompts are in the upcoming lessons. For now, just think of them as ways of extending the behavior of an LLM.

01:18 And the Model Context Protocol is just a set of guidelines, a set of rules that you must follow in order to be able to extend the LLM with tools, resources, and prompts.

01:32 On the other hand, an MCP client is the tool that connects to an LLM and that gives it the opportunity to interact with the MCP server. You can think of it, broadly speaking, as the tool that scans the QR codes because it’s the side that’s consuming the information.

01:52 But in the end, the Model Context Protocol really is just a set of rules that establishes how MCP servers and how MCP clients should communicate so that you can extend LLMs with your data.

02:10 Given these rules, you could write in pure Python, you could write an MCP server. But that would be very cumbersome. So there is a package called mcp that follows the Model Context Protocol and that gives you functions and decorators and classes that enable you to develop MCP servers with more convenience.

02:33 So that’s what you’re going to use in the upcoming lessons. You’re going to use the package mcp to develop your own MCP server.

02:42 Towards the end of the video course, you’re going to use an MCP client to test your MCP server. But this MCP client will be Cursor, the prerequisite that was mentioned in the previous lesson, and it’s not going to be built by you.

02:57 Just for the sake of convenience, you’re going to use an MCP client that is already functional.

03:04 Once you’re ready to get started setting up the project for your MCP server, move on to the next lesson.