Python MCP SDK Best Practices

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) Python SDK (mcp on PyPI) provides the canonical Python implementation for building servers and clients that connect LLMs to external data and tools in a standardized way.

Installation

Use uv (recommended) or pip:

uv add "mcp[cli]"
# or
pip install "mcp[cli]"

Requires Python ≥ 3.10. The [cli] extra adds the mcp CLI for development tooling.

Three Primitives

MCP servers expose three primitives to LLM clients: