Index Ai Academy
Phase 9 of 12 · about 11 hours of study

Model Context Protocol

Build MCP servers, clients and hosts, from the wire format to production. 14 lessons, about 11 hours of study, in four tracks. One lesson is free to try without an account: the first, JSON-RPC 2.0 in depth. The rest need a free account.

Start with JSON-RPC 2.0 in depth Create a free account

What you'll learn

Protocol foundations · 5 lessons, about 3.5 hours

  1. JSON-RPC 2.0 in depth FreeRequests, notifications, errors and a dispatcher built from scratch.
  2. Versions and stateless requestsRevisions by date, the legacy handshake, per-request _meta and version negotiation.
  3. Discovery, capabilities and the two erasserver/discover, declared capabilities, and talking to legacy and modern software alike.
  4. Transports I: stdioNewline-delimited JSON over a subprocess's standard streams.
  5. Transports II: Streamable HTTPOne endpoint, required headers, JSON or event-stream replies.

Building servers · 3 lessons, about 2.5 hours

  1. Build a server: toolsTool definitions, schemas from type hints, results and two kinds of error.
  2. Resources and promptsReadable data, URI templates and reusable prompt templates.
  3. Progress, subscriptions and multi-round-trip requestsLong-running work, change notifications and asking the user mid-call.

Clients and hosts · 2 lessons, about 1.5 hours

  1. Build a clientMetadata on every request, version fallback, paging and caching.
  2. Hosts: connecting servers to a modelMany servers, one agent: namespacing, routing and approvals.

Production MCP · 4 lessons, about 3.5 hours

  1. Securing remote servers with OAuthProtected resource metadata, PKCE, audiences and scope challenges.
  2. MCP securityTool poisoning, rug pulls, confused deputies and local-server risks.
  3. Testing, designing and shipping serversConformance checks, tool design for models, SDKs and deployment.
  4. Capstone: a production MCP serverA complete, tested server for the practice shop.

Before you start

Lessons here build on earlier phases:

The placement test can mark off what you already know, so you only study what's new to you.

What you'll build

A production MCP server

A complete, tested server for the practice shop. Read the tutorial.

  • Plan an MCP server: which tools, resources and prompts, and how each is described
  • Wire the pieces of this phase into one dispatcher that follows the 2026-07-28 rules
  • Serve it over stdio framing and test it end to end through a client

When you finish

Finish every lesson in this phase, or show you know it in the placement test, and you earn a certificate of completion, "Model Context Protocol (Phase 9)", with its own link you can share.