MCP for Engineers
Build servers with real tools, modern transports, and secure access
Learn how MCP servers actually work, from the initialize handshake and capability negotiation to tools, resources, prompts, and transports. Build servers that validate arguments, respect client-declared roots, protect endpoints with OAuth 2.1, and hold their security boundaries under real-world pressure.
See the Invisible
Interactive simulators visualise what's hidden from view.
Hands-On Labs
Step through executions tick by tick. Manipulate state.
Why, Not Just What
Understand the reasoning behind every design decision.
Quizzes & Cheatsheets
Verify your understanding and keep a quick reference handy.
Get Certified
Earn a shareable certificate to prove your deep expertise.
Become the Engineer Who Supervises AI
As AI generates more code, understanding what that code does becomes more valuable, not less. Someone must verify AI output, debug failures, and make architectural decisions.
Build Your Architectural EdgeFrom copied example server to production MCP
Most engineers meet MCP through a quickstart that works until the first real requirement arrives: a client that lacks a capability, a tool that needs structured output, an HTTP deployment that needs sessions and reconnection, or a security review that asks how tokens are validated. This Deep Dive builds the mental model behind the protocol, so you can design tools, resources, and prompts as distinct contracts, choose and configure the right transport, and put OAuth 2.1 and boundary validation in place before an attacker or an audit finds the gap.
What You Will Be Able to Do
Reason about the protocol lifecycle
Trace an MCP session from the initialize handshake through capability negotiation to operational readiness, and know when a message is capability-gated, cancellable, paginated, or simply unavailable on a given client.
Design tools clients can trust
Write tool names, descriptions, and input schemas that models use correctly, separate protocol errors from tool execution errors, and apply argument validation and least-privilege execution to every invocation.
Secure servers end to end
Protect an MCP server with the authorization code flow with PKCE, bind tokens to their audience with resource indicators, and defend against confused-deputy attacks, token passthrough, SSRF, and prompt injection at each trust boundary.
What's Covered
JSON-RPC requests, responses, notifications, and error objects form the wire language of MCP. You learn how initialize negotiates protocol versions and capabilities, why the initialized notification marks readiness, and how sampling and elicitation invert the usual direction as server-initiated client capabilities.
The three MCP primitives serve different owners: tools are model-invoked actions, resources are application-controlled context identified by URIs, and prompts are user-controlled reusable templates. You learn discovery, schemas, structured content, URI templates, subscriptions, and why annotations are untrusted behavioral hints.
The same JSON-RPC semantics ride two different transports. You learn STDIO framing and process lifecycle for local servers, then Streamable HTTP with SSE response streams, session identifiers, event IDs for resumability, Origin validation, and where legacy HTTP+SSE compatibility ends.
Roots let a client declare the URI boundaries a server should operate within, but they are coordination metadata, not an access-control guarantee. You learn roots negotiation, list-change notifications, canonical path resolution with symlink handling, and why the server must validate every resource and tool target itself.
Authorization is where MCP servers meet production. You learn Protected Resource Metadata and authorization server discovery, PKCE, token audience binding, scope enforcement, and 401 recovery, then the defenses that keep it honest: credential isolation, secrets redaction, audit records, and tests at every trust boundary.
The Curriculum
Comprehensive Lessons! Each with theory, interactive simulation, and quiz.
Protocol Lifecycle and Capabilities
Designing Useful MCP Tools
Resources, Templates, and Prompts
STDIO and Streamable HTTP
Roots and Declared Boundaries
OAuth-Protected MCP Servers
Security Boundaries That Hold
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