September 2026
Intermediate to advanced
350 pages
10h 3m
English
Content preview from AI Agents with MCP
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Chapter 5. Building MCP Servers: Providing Tools, Prompts, and Resources to Applications
On the other side of the MCP equation from the client is the server. In Chapter 3, the client examples all used a server that gave their host application the ability to do math. This server was prebuilt and was run locally. In this chapter, our examples will show the construction of this same server from scratch, including all the primitives and features that servers can provide to clients and their host applications.
Note
In Chapters 3 and 4, we talked about host applications from the perspective of the client. Now that we are building servers, we will take the point of view of the server, for whom clients and their host applications are inseparable. For these chapters, we will refer to them collectively as client applications or just clients.
We will begin with a high-level view of the server, including what servers do and how they’re useful, how they connect to clients, and the two main paths for building them with the Python SDK. Then, we will get right into the details:
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Server primitives (tools, prompts, and resources) and how to serve them
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Server utilities (completion, logging, notifications, and pagination) and how to use them
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Server security
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Using client-provided resources like sampling and elicitation
Some of these, like logging, sampling, and roots, are deprecated in the 2026-07-28 MCP spec and will become candidates for deletion 12 months later, so use caution on relying ...
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.