microsoft--semantic-kernel/python/samples/concepts/mcp

Model Context Protocol

The model context protocol is a standard created by Anthropic to allow models to share context with each other. See the official documentation for more information.

It consists of clients and servers, and servers can be hosted locally, or they can be exposed as a online API.

Our goal is that Semantic Kernel can act as both a client and a server.

In this folder the client side of things is demonstrated. It takes the definition of a server and uses that to create a Semantic Kernel plugin, this plugin exposes the tools and prompts of the server as functions in the kernel.

Those can then be used with function calling in a chat or agent.

Server types

There are two types of servers, Stdio and Sse based. The sample shows how to use the Stdio based server, which get's run locally, in this case by using npx.

Some other common runners are uvx, for python servers and docker, for containerized servers.

The code shown works the same for a Sse server, only then a MCPSsePlugin needs to be used instead of the MCPStdioPlugin. For Streamable HTTP server, MCPStreamableHttpPlugin can be used.

The reverse, using Semantic Kernel as a server, can be found in the demos/mcp_server folder.

Running the samples

1. Depending on the sample you want to run:
   1. Docker installed, for the samples that use the Github MCP server.
   2. uv installed, for the samples that use the local MCP server.
2. The Github MCP Server uses a Github Personal Access Token (PAT) to authenticate, see the documentation on how to create one.
3. Check the comment at the start of the sample you want to run, for the appropriate environment variables to set.
4. Install Semantic Kernel with the mcp extra:

pip install semantic-kernel[mcp]

4. Run any of the samples:

cd python/samples/concepts/mcp
python <name>.py