Library Server

A small MCP server modeling a library, plus a client that drives it with the OpenAI Agents SDK. Uses uv for environment and dependency management.

Files

• app.py — the MCP server (4 tools, 2 resources, 1 prompt)

• client.py — connects to app.py over stdio using an Agents SDK agent

• pyproject.toml — project + dependency definition (uv reads this)

• uv.lock — locked dependency versions (commit this alongside pyproject.toml)

Related MCP server: MCP Open Library & File Search Server

1. Install uv (if you don't have it yet)

# macOS / Linux
curl -LsSf https://astral.sh/uv/install.sh | sh

# Windows (PowerShell)
powershell -ExecutionPolicy ByPass -c "irm https://astral.sh/uv/install.ps1 | iex"

Restart your terminal, then confirm it's on PATH:

uv --version

2. Set up the project in VS Code

Open this folder in VS Code, open a terminal (Ctrl+` / Cmd+`), and sync dependencies from the lockfile:

uv sync

This creates a .venv in the project folder and installs exactly what's pinned in uv.lock. Point VS Code at it: Command Palette (Ctrl+Shift+P) → Python: Select Interpreter → pick the one at .venv/bin/python (or .venv\Scripts\python.exe on Windows).

You don't need to manually activate the venv for the commands below — uv run does that for you automatically.

3. Verify the server structure

This is the check the assignment asks for — it should report 4 tools, 1 prompt, 1 resource, 1 template:

uv run fastmcp inspect app.py

Expected output:

Components
  Tools:        4
  Prompts:      1
  Resources:    1
  Templates:    1

You can also run the server directly to confirm it starts cleanly (it just sits there listening on stdio — Ctrl+C to stop):

uv run python app.py

4. Run the client

The client normally needs an LLM provider to decide which tools to invoke. This project defaults to using a local LLM (via Ollama) instead of the remote OpenAI API.

Option A — Use the local LLM (default)

• Ensure an Ollama daemon is running and the model referenced in client.py is available (the client expects http://localhost:11434/v1 and model="gemma4:e4b" by default).

• Then run:

uv run python client.py

Option B — Use OpenAI instead

• Set your OpenAI API key in the environment:

# macOS / Linux
export OPENAI_API_KEY="sk-..."

• Edit client.py to construct an OpenAI-backed model (or replace the local model block) so the client uses your OpenAI credentials, then run:

uv run python client.py

client.py spawns app.py as a subprocess automatically via MCPServerStdio, using uv run python app.py as the launch command — so it always runs inside this project's own uv-managed environment.

What should happen

The agent receives: "Find me books about space, then borrow one for member M001." It should:

1. Call search_books("space") → finds 2001: A Space Odyssey (the only catalog entry with "space" in the title — matches per the assignment's title/author search spec).

2. Call borrow_book("9780451457998", "M001") → decrements its stock and records the borrow in M001's history.

3. Print a final natural-language summary confirming both steps.

If you want to see the raw tool-call trace (not just the final answer), add print(result.new_items) after result = await Runner.run(...) in client.py, or inspect result.raw_responses.

Adding more dependencies later

Don't pip install directly into the venv — use uv so pyproject.toml and uv.lock stay in sync:

uv add some-package

Notes on design choices

• All four tools return plain strings for both success and error cases (e.g. no copies left, unknown ISBN) — never exceptions — so a calling LLM always gets something it can read and relay to the user.

• search_books matches only title/author (per the assignment spec), case-insensitively, substring match.

• The dynamic resource (member://{member_id}/history) returns JSON as a string; FastMCP resource functions need to return str/bytes/specific content types, not raw Python lists of dicts.

• The mock catalog is 8 well-known sci-fi/fantasy titles; stock levels are deliberately mixed (some at 0) so you can test both the success and no-copies-left paths in borrow_book.