MCP Python SDK

Python implementation of the Model Context Protocol (MCP)

Table of Contents

• Overview
• Installation
• Writing MCP Servers
  • FastMCP (Recommended)
  • Low-Level Server (Advanced)
• Writing MCP Clients
• MCP Primitives
  • Server Capabilities
• Documentation
• Contributing
• License

Overview

The Model Context Protocol allows applications to provide context for LLMs in a standardized way, separating the concerns of providing context from the actual LLM interaction. This Python SDK implements the full MCP specification, making it easy to:

• Build MCP clients that can connect to any MCP server
• Create MCP servers that expose resources, prompts and tools
• Use standard transports like stdio and SSE
• Handle all MCP protocol messages and lifecycle events

Installation

We recommend the use of uv to manage your Python projects:

uv add mcp

Alternatively, add mcp to your requirements.txt:

pip install mcp
# or add to requirements.txt
pip install -r requirements.txt

Writing MCP Servers

The MCP Python SDK provides two ways to implement servers:

FastMCP (Recommended)

FastMCP provides a high-level, Pythonic interface for building MCP servers quickly and easily. It handles all the complex protocol details so you can focus on building great tools:

from mcp.server.fastmcp import FastMCP

mcp = FastMCP("Demo")

@mcp.tool()
def add(a: int, b: int) -> int:
    """Add two numbers"""
    return a + b

@mcp.resource("greeting://{name}")
def get_greeting(name: str) -> str:
    """Get a personalized greeting"""
    return f"Hello, {name}!"

FastMCP features:

• Simple, decorator-based API
• Automatic type handling and validation
• Built-in support for async functions
• Progress reporting and logging
• Resource templating
• Image handling

Low-Level Server (Advanced)

For more control, you can use the low-level server implementation directly. This gives you full access to the protocol and allows you to customize every aspect of your server:

from mcp.server.lowlevel import Server, NotificationOptions
from mcp.server.models import InitializationOptions
import mcp.server.stdio
import mcp.types as types

# Create a server instance
server = Server("example-server")

@server.list_prompts()
async def handle_list_prompts() -> list[types.Prompt]:
    return [
        types.Prompt(
            name="example-prompt",
            description="An example prompt template",
            arguments=[
                types.PromptArgument(
                    name="arg1",
                    description="Example argument",
                    required=True
                )
            ]
        )
    ]

@server.get_prompt()
async def handle_get_prompt(
    name: str,
    arguments: dict[str, str] | None
) -> types.GetPromptResult:
    if name != "example-prompt":
        raise ValueError(f"Unknown prompt: {name}")

    return types.GetPromptResult(
        description="Example prompt",
        messages=[
            types.PromptMessage(
                role="user",
                content=types.TextContent(
                    type="text",
                    text="Example prompt text"
                )
            )
        ]
    )

async def run():
    async with mcp.server.stdio.stdio_server() as (read_stream, write_stream):
        await server.run(
            read_stream,
            write_stream,
            InitializationOptions(
                server_name="example",
                server_version="0.1.0",
                capabilities=server.get_capabilities(
                    notification_options=NotificationOptions(),
                    experimental_capabilities={},
                )
            )
        )

if __name__ == "__main__":
    import asyncio
    asyncio.run(run())

Writing MCP Clients

The SDK provides a high-level client interface for connecting to MCP servers:

from mcp import ClientSession, StdioServerParameters
from mcp.client.stdio import stdio_client

# Create server parameters for stdio connection
server_params = StdioServerParameters(
    command="python", # Executable
    args=["example_server.py"], # Optional command line arguments
    env=None # Optional environment variables
)

async def run():
    async with stdio_client(server_params) as (read, write):
        async with ClientSession(read, write) as session:
            # Initialize the connection
            await session.initialize()

            # List available prompts
            prompts = await session.list_prompts()

            # Get a prompt
            prompt = await session.get_prompt("example-prompt", arguments={"arg1": "value"})

            # List available resources
            resources = await session.list_resources()

            # List available tools
            tools = await session.list_tools()

            # Read a resource
            resource = await session.read_resource("file://some/path")

            # Call a tool
            result = await session.call_tool("tool-name", arguments={"arg1": "value"})

if __name__ == "__main__":
    import asyncio
    asyncio.run(run())

MCP Primitives

The MCP protocol defines three core primitives that servers can implement:

Primitive	Control	Description	Example Use
Prompts	User-controlled	Interactive templates invoked by user choice	Slash commands, menu options
Resources	Application-controlled	Contextual data managed by the client application	File contents, API responses
Tools	Model-controlled	Functions exposed to the LLM to take actions	API calls, data updates

Server Capabilities

MCP servers declare capabilities during initialization:

Capability	Feature Flag	Description
prompts	listChanged	Prompt template management
resources	subscribe listChanged	Resource exposure and updates
tools	listChanged	Tool discovery and execution
logging	-	Server logging configuration
completion	-	Argument completion suggestions

Documentation

• Model Context Protocol documentation
• Model Context Protocol specification
• Officially supported servers

Contributing

We are passionate about supporting contributors of all levels of experience and would love to see you get involved in the project. See the contributing guide to get started.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.