Learn AI Curriculum Cookbook

Foundations 4 min

MCP — how AI plugs into your tools

The standard that lets agents talk to your filesystem, Slack, GitHub, Postgres, etc.

MCP (Model Context Protocol) is a standard for letting an AI assistant reach into the rest of your stack — your filesystem, your Slack, your Linear board, your database, your browser. Without MCP, the AI only knows what's in the current chat. With MCP, it can read a real-time spreadsheet, post to Slack, search Postgres, or click around a webpage.

AI client Claude Code · Cursor · Continue Filesystem GitHub Slack Postgres Linear / Jira Browser / Playwright MCP servers — installed locally or hosted

The 30-second mental model

  • An MCP server exposes a set of tools (e.g. "read file", "post message", "run SQL").
  • An MCP client is your AI tool (Claude Code, Cursor, Continue, etc.) that knows how to call those tools.
  • You install the server, configure the client to find it, restart, and now your AI can use it.

What people actually use it for

MCP serverWhat it unlocks
Filesystem"Summarise all PDFs in ~/Downloads"
GitHub"Open a PR for this branch with a good description"
Slack"Post the deploy result to #ops"
Postgres / SQLite"How many active users last week?"
Linear / Jira / Asana"What's blocked in my queue?"
Playwright / browser"Click around the staging site and report any 500s"
Google Drive / Notion"Update the spec doc with these decisions"

Setup pattern (the same for almost any MCP)

  1. Find the MCP server. Most are at github.com/modelcontextprotocol/servers or as npm/pypi packages.
  2. Add it to your AI client's MCP config. In Claude Code: claude mcp add <name> <command>. In Cursor: Settings → MCP → Add.
  3. Restart the client.
  4. Ask the AI: "What MCP tools do you have?" — it'll list them.
Why it's a big deal. Before MCP, every AI tool had its own incompatible plugin system. With MCP, write a server once, use it from any client. The list of available servers grows by the week.

Where MCP shows up in this tutorial

  • Coding CLIs (Claude Code, Cursor, Continue) — primary clients.
  • Open-source agents (Hermes, OpenClaw, Goose) — most support MCP.
  • Chat apps — partial support, growing. Claude.ai supports remote MCP in some plans.
Who made MCP?
Anthropic open-sourced the spec in late 2024. OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and the major editor vendors adopted it through 2025/26. It's a community standard now, governed openly.
Are MCP servers safe?
A server runs on your machine (or wherever you put it) and has whatever access you give it. Treat third-party MCP servers like any code: prefer the official ones from modelcontextprotocol/servers, scope credentials tightly, read the code for anything that touches sensitive data.
Can I write my own MCP server?
Yes — there are SDKs in TypeScript, Python, Go, Rust, Kotlin, C#. A trivial server is ~40 lines. See modelcontextprotocol.io.