mcp-quickserver

A working MCP (Model Context Protocol) server template. Fork it, swap the store, add your tools.

Demonstrates all three MCP primitives — tools, resources, and prompts — with both stdio and SSE transports, proper error handling, and a test harness that runs without a connected client.

What's included

The backing store is an in-memory NoteStore. Replacing it with SQLite, Postgres, or Redis is a one-file change.

Related MCP server: Basic MCP Server

Install

pip install -e .

Requires Python ≥ 3.10 and the mcp SDK.

Wire to Claude Desktop

Copy claude_desktop_config.json.example into your Claude Desktop config:

macOS: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/claude_desktop_config.json

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "quickserver": {
      "command": "python",
      "args": ["-m", "mcpquickserver"],
      "cwd": "/absolute/path/to/mcp-quickserver"
    }
  }
}

Restart Claude Desktop. The tools appear automatically in the tool picker.

Wire to Claude Code

# From within your project
claude mcp add quickserver -- python -m mcpquickserver

Or add to .claude/settings.json:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "quickserver": {
      "command": "python",
      "args": ["-m", "mcpquickserver"]
    }
  }
}

Run as an HTTP server (SSE transport)

MCP_HOST=0.0.0.0 MCP_PORT=9000 python -m mcpquickserver --transport sse

SSE transport is useful when the client runs in a different process or on a different machine.

Code layout

src/mcpquickserver/
├── server.py    ← tool/resource/prompt registration against a NoteStore
├── store.py     ← NoteStore business logic (swap this for persistence)
└── __main__.py  ← CLI entry point

Adding a tool

# server.py
@mcp.tool()
def word_count(text: str) -> str:
    """Count the words in a block of text."""
    return str(len(text.split()))

FastMCP generates the JSON schema from the type annotations. The docstring becomes the tool description shown to the model.

Adding a resource

@mcp.resource("config://settings")
def settings_resource() -> str:
    """Current server configuration as JSON."""
    return json.dumps({"version": "0.1.0", "store": "memory"})

Dynamic URI segments work too — notes://{note_id} captures note_id from the URI and passes it as a parameter.

Adding a prompt template

@mcp.prompt()
def draft_email(recipient: str, topic: str) -> str:
    """Build a prompt to draft a professional email."""
    return f"Please draft a professional email to {recipient} about: {topic}"

Error handling

Tools that raise an exception return an is_error: true result to the model so it can recover — the exception does not propagate to the caller or crash the server:

@mcp.tool()
def get_note(note_id: str) -> str:
    """Retrieve a note by its ID."""
    note = store.get(note_id)
    if note is None:
        raise ValueError(f"No note with id {note_id!r}")  # → is_error result
    return json.dumps(note, indent=2)

Tests

pip install -e ".[dev]"
pytest -v

Tests cover the NoteStore business logic and all tool/resource/prompt handlers directly. No connected client required. The store module attribute is monkeypatched per test so each test starts with a clean slate.

Replacing the store

NoteStore in store.py exposes five methods: add, get, delete, search, all. Any object that implements those five is a drop-in replacement:

# e.g. SQLite backend
class SqliteNoteStore:
    def __init__(self, db_path: str): ...
    def add(self, title, content, tags=None) -> str: ...
    def get(self, note_id) -> dict | None: ...
    def delete(self, note_id) -> bool: ...
    def search(self, query="", tag="") -> list[dict]: ...
    def all(self) -> list[dict]: ...

Swap the store = NoteStore() line in server.py and the rest is unchanged.