This module provides an **introduction to the Model Context Protocol (MCP)**, a flexible and extensible architecture designed for seamless communication between LLM applications and integrations.
You should now:
* **Understand the fundamental purpose of MCP**: MCP facilitates communication between LLM applications (hosts) and services that provide context, tools, and prompts (servers).
* **Grasp the client-server architecture of MCP**:
* **Hosts** are LLM applications (e.g., Claude Desktop, IDEs) that initiate connections.
* **Clients** are components within the host application that maintain 1:1 connections with servers.
* **Servers** are processes that provide context, tools, and prompts to clients.
* **Identify the core components of MCP communication**:
* **Protocol Layer**: Handles high-level communication patterns, message framing, and request/response linking. Key classes include `Protocol`, `Client`, and `Server`.
* **Transport Layer**: Manages the actual communication between clients and servers. MCP supports **Stdio transport** (for local processes) and **HTTP with SSE transport** (for remote communication). All transports use **JSON-RPC 2.0** for message exchange.
* **Recognize the basic message types and connection lifecycle in MCP**:
* **Message Types**:
* **Requests**: Expect a response from the other side.
* **Results**: Successful responses to requests.
* **Errors**: Indicate a failed request.
* **Notifications**: One-way messages that do not expect a response.
* **Connection Lifecycle**: Involves an **Initialization** phase (client sends `initialize` request, server responds, client sends `initialized` notification), followed by **Message Exchange** (request-response and notifications), and finally **Termination** (clean shutdown or disconnection).
This foundational understanding of MCP's architecture, components, and communication patterns is crucial for working with LLM applications and integrations built upon this protocol.
