Introduction to Model Context Protocol

In this course, you'll discover how to build powerful AI applications using the Model Context Protocol, a revolutionary approach that eliminates tedious integration code when connecting Claude to external services and data sources. This course takes you from understanding MCP's core architecture to building fully functional MCP servers and clients that can interact with real-world systems. You'll learn the three essential MCP primitives - tools, resources, and prompts - and understand when to use each one. Through hands-on implementation, you'll create your own MCP server with the Python SDK, defining tools that Claude can call autonomously, resources that provide data to your applications, and prompts that deliver professionally crafted workflows to end users. By building both client and server components, you'll gain complete insight into how MCP enables seamless communication between AI models and external services. You'll work with the MCP Inspector to test your implementations, understand transport protocols, and see exactly how messages flow through the entire system. Whether you're building GitHub integrations, document management systems, or custom AI workflows, this course gives you the practical skills to leverage MCP's standardized approach and dramatically reduce your development burden.