How I maintain my site with chat – Goosielabs Experiments of Cryptographic Functions

What is MCP?

MCP stands for Model Context Protocol — an open standard developed by Anthropic. It allows AI assistants like Claude to connect with external tools, databases, files, and services.

Think of MCP as a universal plug for AI: instead of writing custom code for every integration, tools talk to the AI through one standardized protocol.

How does it work?

MCP uses a client-server architecture:

MCP Host — the AI assistant (e.g. Claude Code, Claude Desktop)
MCP Server — a program that exposes tools and data (e.g. Google Drive, GitHub, your own database)
MCP Client — the bridge that connects host and server

Through MCP servers, the AI can read, write, and take actions — all under your control.

What can you do with it?

Read and create files in Google Drive or your local system
Create GitHub issues and review code
Query and update databases
Scrape websites and perform browser tasks
Expose your own tools to the AI via a self-built MCP server

How do you use MCP with Claude?

1. Claude Desktop

Install Claude Desktop and edit the configuration file claude_desktop_config.json. Add MCP servers here:

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "filesystem": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem", "/path/to/folder"]
    }
  }
}

2. Claude Code (CLI)

Add MCP servers via the terminal:

claude mcp add <name> -- <command> [arguments]

View all active servers with:

claude mcp list

3. Popular MCP servers

Server	What it does
@modelcontextprotocol/server-filesystem	Read/write local files
@modelcontextprotocol/server-github	Manage GitHub repos and issues
@modelcontextprotocol/server-google-drive	Google Drive files
@modelcontextprotocol/server-postgres	Query a PostgreSQL database
@modelcontextprotocol/server-puppeteer	Browser automation

Build your own MCP server

You can also build your own MCP server using the official SDK in Python or TypeScript:

npm install @modelcontextprotocol/sdk

This lets you offer any API, database, or service as a tool to Claude.

More information

Official documentation: modelcontextprotocol.io
GitHub: github.com/modelcontextprotocol
Claude Code docs: docs.anthropic.com