💭 in your head · nothing to type
Picture Claude Code as an embassy in a foreign city. Without the embassy, you can't officially speak to local authorities — there's a protocol barrier.
Don't picture this as a technical question. Picture a silent cordon between nations: no ambassador, no interpreter — both sides stand watching each other without exchanging a word. Which external "neighbor" is silently standing at your cordon right now — GitHub, Notion, browser, Telegram?
Hold it in your head: which one breaks the silence first?
💭 in your head · nothing to type
MCP is the shared diplomatic language: the embassy already knows how to speak with any nation through a single protocol.
Don't think of this as "connecting tools." Picture a telegraph cable between two distant stations: the radio operator on each end knows Morse. It doesn't matter who's on the other side, the signal goes through. One protocol instead of a thousand bilateral treaties.
Run it in your head: if MCP is the shared code, what's the first "telegram" you'd send?
| Primitive | Controlled by | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Tools | The model | Functions the agent calls: API requests, writing files |
| Resources | The application | Data sources (like GET requests): files, DB records |
| Prompts | The user | Templates for optimal usage |
The simplest way is a terminal command, run from the project folder. For example, the official Brave search server:
claude mcp add --scope project brave-search -- npx -y @brave/brave-search-mcp-server
The server needs a Brave API key — the package README says how to pass it.
For other servers, take the package name from their README: names change, and the current one is always there. The README also says how to pass the token. The official GitHub server is github/github-mcp-server: it has a remote address https://api.githubcopilot.com/mcp/ and a Docker image, and its README describes how to connect. The old @modelcontextprotocol/server-github and @modelcontextprotocol/server-brave-search packages are archived and no longer updated.
With --scope project, Claude Code writes the server into .mcp.json at the project root — shared with the team and kept in git. You can also edit it by hand: