mcp-trial

Me learning the Model Context Protocol by building a server for the GitHub API. Python SDK v2, running over stdio and hooked into Claude Code.

What it does

Two tools, one for a repo's summary and one for its recent commit messages. There's also a resource that serves a repo's raw README, and a prompt template for assessing a repo as a portfolio piece.

Related MCP server: GitHub MCP Server

Running it

uv sync
uv run mcp dev server.py          # opens the inspector
uv run python test_server.py      # calls the server directly, no host needed

To register it with Claude Code:

claude mcp add gh-lab -- uv run --directory /path/to/mcp-trial mcp run server.py

What I learned

Your type hints are the actual API contract, since the SDK builds the tool's JSON schema straight from the function signature. Writing limit: int = 5 also makes that parameter optional, so the model can skip it.

Docstrings mattered more than I expected, because they get sent to the model as the tool description and decide which tool it picks. I asked Claude Code whether a repo was actively maintained, and it called both tools and worked it out, which only happened because the descriptions made them look combinable.

Everything a tool returns becomes text in the model's context, so each field costs tokens. GitHub hands back about a hundred fields and I return five.

Raising an error beats returning one, since raising sets a flag the host checks and the message reaches the model as something it can act on.

Async doesn't make anything faster. A single call takes the same time either way. What await does is park the function and free the event loop so other calls can run during the wait.

Notes

mcp-reference.md has my working notes from building this.