MCP Cheat Sheet

This content was generated with the assistance of AI and should be verified against the official documentation of each tool and framework before being relied on in production.

This section’s bibliography lists the reference material consulted while preparing these pages.

A single-page index of quick back-links to every page in this sub-section, grouped the same way as the sub-section itself — handy for jumping straight to the topic you need instead of paging through the full navigation.

The downloadable PDF is a separate, single A4 page meant for printing. It states the version baseline this sub-section targets — MCP specification 2026-07-28, Python mcp 2.2.0 and FastMCP 4.0.10, Spring Boot 4.1 with Spring AI 2.0.1 and the MCP Java SDK 2.0, Node.js 24 with @modelcontextprotocol/server 2.2.0, and MCP Inspector 2.8.0, all checked on 2026-09-29 — and covers:

  • the 2026-07-28 changes at a glance;

  • message shapes (server/discover, tools/list, tools/call, the input_required round trip);

  • the primitives table (tools, resources, prompts, elicitation) and who controls each;

  • the transports and the Streamable HTTP headers;

  • the authorization checklist;

  • Python, Spring and Node server skeletons side by side;

  • the Inspector CLI commands;

  • host configuration snippets for Claude Code, VS Code and the Copilot cloud agent;

  • the tool-design rules;

  • the RAG-over-MCP pattern;

  • the security checklist.

Overview — Model Context Protocol (MCP).

Concepts — MCP Architecture, Tools, Resources, Prompts & Elicitation, Transports and Authorization.

Building servers — Python MCP Servers, MCP inside FastAPI, Spring Boot MCP Servers and Node.js MCP Servers.

Clients and hosts — Building MCP Clients and Connecting Hosts.

Testing and deployment — Testing & Debugging and Deploying Remote Servers.

Design and integration — Designing Good MCP Servers, Exposing RAG through MCP and MCP Security.

Download the Model Context Protocol (MCP) Cheat Sheet (PDF)

References

The PDF summarizes these official pages; each is cited in full on the page listed above that covers it, and in MCP’s bibliography.

Specification and protocol

SDKs and frameworks

Tools and hosts