Model Context Protocol · L3 · 25 min
A notes server on paper
Learn in five minutes
- The server offers two resources: list notes, read note.
- It offers no send tool.
- The host is a learning page, not a company product.
- The client asks, the person allows read, the note is quoted.
- If the note is missing, the host refuses.
This is the capstone's tool shape in miniature. You can implement it later with the Python labs. You do not need a public URL to understand it.
Visual
Paper call
- Person asks: what does note A say about hours?
- Client lists tools and resources.
- Person allows read of note A.
- Server returns the sentence.
- Host quotes it and stops.
Quiz
Ecosystem
- Paper server
- A design you can trace without running a public service.
Sisters: Plugins, Function calling, Language-server ideas.
A notes server can serve chat and a voice host if both speak the same protocol.
Treat the spec revision as something you pin, like a model id.
Config
- Write the goal in one sentence.
- Name the input and the allowed output.
- Save the trace next to the result.
Troubleshooting
- The answer looks fluent and is wrong. Check whether a source passage actually contains the claim.
- The loop never stops. Set a step cap and stop when the tool result repeats.
Sources and go deeper
- Model Context Protocol specification, 2025-06-18 spec last checked 2026-10
- Lewis and co-authors, Retrieval-Augmented Generation for Knowledge-Intensive NLP Tasks, 2020 paper last checked 2026-10
- What is the Model Context Protocol (MCP)? spec last checked 2026-10
- Model Context Protocol — Wikipedia wikipedia last checked 2026-10
- Retrieval-augmented generation — Wikipedia wikipedia last checked 2026-10