Build Your First MCP Server in Python — 3 Patterns You Need

Your LLM can generate text. It cannot read your database, call your API, or check your calendar. That gap between "knows language" and "does useful work" is what the Model Context Protocol (MCP) closes. MCP is a standardized protocol — maintained by Anthropic — that lets LLM-powered applications connect to external data and tools through servers you build. One protocol, any client. Claude Desktop, Cursor, VS Code Copilot, and custom agents all speak the same language. This tutorial builds three MCP servers from scratch. Each one teaches a different primitive: tools (functions the LLM can call), resources (data the LLM can read), and prompts (reusable templates that guide the LLM). By the end, you will have working code for all three. Setup: One Install, One Import The official Python SDK ships everything you need. Install it: pip install "mcp[cli]" As of v1.26.0, the SDK includes FastMCP — a high-level class that handles JSON-RPC protocol details, schema generation from type hints, and