Model Context Protocol study guide

In this blog, I’ve gathered a collection of articles, blogs, and other documentation that provide an in-depth look at the Model Context Protocol basics, including how it functions, its benefits, architecture, and core principles. Additionally, I’ve included a curated list of related interesting readings to further explore these topics.

Why MCP? What is MCP?

• Why MCP? (Official MCP Specification)
• Introducing the Model Context Protocol by Anthropic
• Why MCP Matters by sandeep, OpenCV
• What Is MCP, and Why Is Everyone – Suddenly!– Talking About It? by Ksenia Se
• Model Context Protocol (MCP) an overview by Philipp Schmid

How it works?

Core primitives (Official MCP Specification)

• Resources
• Prompts
• Tools

Core concepts (Official MCP Specification)

• Sampling
• Roots
• Transports

Main concepts

• What Is the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and How It Works by Descope
• Core architecture (Official MCP Specification)
• MCP – A Beginner’s Guide by sandeep, OpenCV
• MCP architecture and core components by Descope
• How MCP works by Descope (very nice and details protocol handshake sequential diagram)

Best practices (Official MCP Specification)

• Architecture
• Resources
• Prompts
• Tools
• Tool annotations
• Sampling
• Roots
• Transports

Security

• Security considerations for MCP servers by Descope
• Diving Into the MCP Authorization Specification by Descope
• What about Security, Updates, Authentication? by Philipp Schmid

Security considerations (Official MCP Specification)

• Architecture
• Resources
• Prompts
• Tools
• Sampling
• Transports
• Transport DNS Rebinding Attacks

Use cases

• MCP in Action by PulseMCP
• MCP Server Use Cases by MCP.so
• How We’re Using MCP to Automate Real Workflows: 6 Working Use Cases by Joel Lim, Runbear
• Real-World Implementations: How Are Businesses Using MCP? by Matt Leppington
• Use Cases by sandeep, OpenCV

Interesting reads and references

• Model Context Protocol Servers (Official MCP HitHub repository)
• Example Servers (Official MCP Specification)
• LLM isolation & the NxM problem by Descope
• What is the Language Server Protocol? by Microsoft
• Humans in the Loop: The Design of Interactive AI Systems by Ge Wang, Stanford HAI
• JSON-RPC 2.0 Specification
• URI Template Specification
• A collection of MCP servers by punkpeye (Frank Fiegel)
• A curated list of Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers by wong2
• TOP 11 Essential MCP Libraries by JanusAI.Pro
• STDIO (Standard Input/Output)
• Standard input, standard output, and standard error files by IBM
• How Server-Sent Events (SSE) Work by Zachary Lee
• The Model Context Protocol specification and SDKs (Official GitHub repo)