AI Agents with MCP

Anthropic released the Model Context Protocol at the end of 2024, and it quickly became the standard way to turn a chatbot into an agent that can act, plan, and use tools on its own. This book goes deep on MCP, well beyond the documentation. You’ll build up your own client and then a server, both supporting the full spec in Python, and get a real feel for how the protocol works along the way.

Inside the book

What you'll build

The protocol end-to-end

Where MCP came from, why it exists, and how clients, servers, and transports fit together to make it work.

Build real servers & clients

You'll build up a working client, then a server that provides tools, prompts, and resources, built the way you'd actually ship it.

Ship production-ready MCP

Test and secure your servers, share them with others, dig into how transports really work, and, if you're up for it, contribute back to MCP itself.

Contents

01Agentic AI and MCP
02An Introduction to the Model Context Protocol
03Making an Intelligent Application Agentic with MCP Clients
04MCP Clients: Advanced Use and Best Practices
05Building MCP Servers: Providing Tools, Prompts and Resources to Applications
06Building MCP Servers: Advanced Use with Utilities and Integrating Client Capabilities
07Testing, Securing, and Sharing Your MCP Server
08Connecting Clients and Servers: MCP Transports
09Wrapping Up: Tools to Help You Build, MCP Extensions, and Contributing to MCP

Chapter list for the early release; final titles and order may change.

About the author

Kyle Stratis is the founder and principal consultant of Stratis Data Labs, where he helps startups and established firms with AI engineering, computer vision, data engineering, and ML engineering — drawing on more than a decade as a software engineer. He also serves as VP of Engineering at Telepath, bringing cutting-edge AI research into production.

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Work with Stratis Data Labs

What you'll build

The protocol end-to-end

Build real servers & clients

Ship production-ready MCP

Table of contents

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