MCP demystified: a hands-on intro to building MCP servers
Author marcochavezco walks through building a first MCP server in TypeScript, explaining the protocol's core concepts and capping the exploration with a custom tool called `gitstoria` that attaches LLM-generated session logs to git commits.
Score breakdown
The post demonstrates that building a functional MCP server requires minimal boilerplate, lowering the perceived barrier for developers looking to extend LLM clients with custom tools.
- 01MCP is described as an open-source standard for connecting AI applications to external systems, compared to USB-C for AI.
- 02MCP servers expose three core capabilities: Resources, Tools, and Prompts.
- 03Servers can be STDIO-based (local, single-user) or HTTP-based (web apps and distributed systems).
marcochavezco's Dev.to post frames MCP as a well-defined contract rather than a complex protocol, pushing back on the expectation of a steep learning curve. The post explains that MCP is an open-source standard for connecting AI applications to external systems, with real-world integrations already spanning Figma, PostHog, and GitHub. On the server side, three main capabilities exist: Resources, Tools, and Prompts. The author focused first on Tools — functions an LLM can invoke — and found the implementation surprisingly approachable, noting that the core work is a single `registerTool` block with the rest being boilerplate. The post also clarifies the STDIO vs. HTTP transport distinction: STDIO is suited for local, single-user, performant tools, while HTTP transports are designed for web applications and distributed systems.
To prove deeper understanding, the author built `gitstoria`, published as an npm package (`npm i gitstoria`).
To prove deeper understanding, the author built `gitstoria`, published as an npm package (`npm i gitstoria`). The tool works via a post-commit hook that records each commit hash in a local SQLite database; the user then prompts Claude to log what they worked on, Claude calls the `gitstoria` MCP tools to read the diff, and writes a structured session log back to the database. The full source is available on GitHub. The post closes by framing two paths forward: workflow automation ecosystems like n8n, and deeper AI engineering — with the author choosing the latter.
Key facts
- 01MCP is described as an open-source standard for connecting AI applications to external systems, compared to USB-C for AI.
- 02MCP servers expose three core capabilities: Resources, Tools, and Prompts.
- 03Servers can be STDIO-based (local, single-user) or HTTP-based (web apps and distributed systems).
- 04The minimal tool example uses `@modelcontextprotocol/sdk` and a single `registerTool` block with Zod for schema validation.
- 05The author built `gitstoria`, an MCP tool that attaches LLM-generated session logs to git commits using a post-commit hook and a local SQLite database.
- 06`gitstoria` is available as an npm package (`npm i gitstoria`) with full source on GitHub.
- 07Claude Desktop was used as the MCP client throughout the author's experimentation.
Topics
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