MCP Configuration and Tool Distribution
Understand how to configure and distribute tools in a Model Context Protocol (MCP) architecture. Explore MCP server setup, transport mechanisms, and client integration to enable tool sharing across multiple agents and applications. Learn to write minimal MCP servers, configure them in Claude Code, and manage tool naming conflicts effectively.
In the previous two lessons, we defined tools inline: a TOOLS list passed directly to client.messages.create(). That pattern works well for a single agent in a single codebase. The Model Context Protocol (MCP) solves a different problem: how do you expose the same set of tools to Claude across multiple agents, applications, or users without duplicating the tool definitions in every caller?
MCP defines a standard protocol for a server process to advertise tools and for a Claude-compatible client to discover and invoke them. From Claude's perspective, an MCP-registered tool behaves identically to an inline tool. The behavioral contract principles from the previous lessons apply without change. What changes is where the tool lives and how the client learns about it. By the end of this lesson, we will be able to:
Explain the relationship between an MCP server, a transport, and the Claude client
Write a minimal MCP server that exposes one tool
Configure an MCP server in Claude Code settings
Identify what changes and what stays the same when moving from inline tools to MCP
The MCP architecture
An MCP setup has three parts: the server, the ...
