MCP: start here
I have written 16 posts about the Model Context Protocol, and they were not published in a sensible order. This is the order I would read them in. Skip ahead if you already know the early parts.
What MCP is
Start here if the acronym is new, or if you have only seen the hello-world. 01 What Are MCP Servers? The Developer's Guide to the Model Context Protocol The working version of "what is MCP", written from running servers rather than reading the spec. 02 MCP Architecture Explained: Tools, Resources, Prompts, and How They Fit Together The parts of the spec most people skip: capability negotiation, lifecycle, notifications. 03 MCP Tools vs Resources vs Prompts: When to Use Which Primitive Why there are three primitives, and why most servers wrongly expose everything as a tool.
Setup
Using servers before building them. 04 Setting Up MCP Servers with Claude Desktop and Claude Code Where the config lives in Claude Desktop and Claude Code, and what to check when nothing connects. 05 The Best MCP Servers for Developers in 2026: A Curated Guide The servers I actually use, plus a few I would hand to another developer. Opinionated, and dated.
Building servers
The practical build, in Go. 06 Building MCP Servers in Go: The Complete Guide Everything tutorials stop short of: SDK choice, patterns, and what four real servers taught me. 07 Expo MCP Server: Let AI Agents See and Control Your React Native App A server that lets an agent see and drive a React Native app, including a hacky iOS Simulator workaround. 08 Building a CRM Where the Agent Is the Primary User What changes when the agent, not the human, is the primary user of internal tooling.
Transports, security, testing, deployment
What decides whether a server survives outside your laptop. 09 MCP Server Transports: Stdio vs SSE vs Streamable HTTP in Practice Stdio, SSE or Streamable HTTP: the first decision, and what I would pick for each situation. 10 MCP Server Security: OAuth 2.1, Authentication, and Authorization Patterns The threat model for remote servers and the OAuth 2.1 patterns that held up. 11 Testing and Debugging MCP Servers: Inspector, Integration Tests, and CI Patterns Inspector, integration tests and CI patterns, since the SDKs show you how to build and not how to test. 12 Deploying MCP Servers to Production: Hosting, Docker, and Transport Decisions What breaks when a team shares one server: transport, auth, lifecycle and monitoring.
Case studies: Scry, Tome, Lore
Three servers I built and use daily, and the design lessons from each. 13 The Context Layer: Four Daemons That Replace Half of Claude Code's Tool Calls The overview: four daemons that pre-compute context so Claude Code stops searching. 14 Building an MCP Server for Code Intelligence: How I Built Scry Scry. Tool design matters more than protocol plumbing, and latency changes how agents behave. 15 Building an MCP Server for Database Schema: How I Built Tome Tome. Giving agents live schema awareness instead of letting them read migrations and guess. 16 Building an MCP Server for Git Intelligence: How I Built Lore Lore. Blame, history and co-change pre-indexed and served as seven focused tools.