Start Here: Understanding MCP

The same handful of questions comes up every week, so this is the short answer to all of them plus the reading order that actually makes sense. If you’re new to the Model Context Protocol, start at the top. If you already know the idea and want to build something, skip to the third section.

Start with the idea

What is Model Context Protocol? — the ten-minute version. What MCP is, what an MCP server does, and the three things it can expose. Read this first if the term is new to you.

MCP vs an API: what actually changes — the question everyone with an existing API asks. Short answer: the endpoints stay, but the consumer is a model rather than a developer who read your docs, and six things follow from that.

Then work out whether it’s useful to you

What can you actually do with an MCP server? — six things people genuinely build, what separates a tool an AI uses well from one it fumbles, and the jobs MCP is the wrong answer to. This is the one to read if “AI can use your tools” hasn’t clicked yet.

10 best MCP servers in 2026 — what good ones look like in the wild, which is the fastest way to calibrate your own.

Then build one

How to add MCP to your SaaS — the practical path from “we have an API” to “customers can reach it from Claude”.

OpenAPI to MCP server — if you already have a spec, this is the shortest route to a working server.

MCP authentication explained — API keys, bearer tokens and OAuth, and which to reach for. The part most people get wrong on the first attempt.

Stateless MCP servers — what the 2026 protocol revision changed, and why it matters if you’re deploying anywhere with more than one process.

Common questions, briefly

• Do I need to be a developer? To build a server with GetMCP, no — you paste a cURL command or an API spec and adjust the descriptions. To have something worth exposing, you need an API or a database behind it.
• Does it work with my app? If your app has an HTTP API, almost certainly. If it doesn’t, it depends on what it does speak — GetMCP also connects to IMAP mailboxes directly, for instance.
• Which AI clients can connect? Claude, Cursor, ChatGPT, Windsurf, VS Code and anything else that speaks MCP — setup for each is here.
• Where does my data go? Nowhere it doesn’t already go. GetMCP runs on your own server, so calls travel between your infrastructure and your AI client.

Still stuck?

The knowledge base covers setup, connecting clients, authentication and troubleshooting in more depth, and questions there reach a human. If you’d rather just try it, GetMCP installs in about two minutes on any host with PHP.