C# SDK Released for Model Context Protocol (MCP)

Understanding Model Context Protocol (MCP)

The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is rapidly emerging as a crucial bridge connecting Large Language Models (LLMs) with a diverse array of AI tools. Developed by Anthropic, MCP is an open protocol designed to facilitate seamless integration between LLMs and AI tools across various programming languages. Its primary goal is to standardize the interactions between clients and servers, allowing applications to interact with any server supporting the protocol in a “plug-and-play” manner. This eliminates the need for developers to write specific code adjustments for different APIs, significantly reducing the complexity and time associated with integrating LLMs and AI tools into their workflows. In essence, the MCP protocol can be viewed as a high-level API wrapper, streamlining the communication process between disparate services.

The core value proposition of MCP lies in its ability to abstract away the complexities of underlying APIs, providing a consistent and unified interface for interacting with LLMs and AI tools. This abstraction not only simplifies the development process but also fosters greater interoperability and portability. Developers can seamlessly switch between different LLM providers or AI tools without having to rewrite their code, promoting flexibility and reducing vendor lock-in.

The adoption of MCP is steadily growing, with an expanding ecosystem of supported servers. This growth is driven by the increasing demand for efficient and standardized ways to integrate LLMs into various applications and workflows.

• AWS: Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides dedicated MCP servers, enabling developers to seamlessly integrate AWS’s best practices directly into their development processes. This integration allows developers to leverage the power of AWS’s vast infrastructure and services within their LLM-powered applications.

• Microsoft Azure: The Azure MCP server allows MCP clients to access essential Azure services and tools, including Azure Storage, Cosmos DB, and the Azure Command-Line Interface (CLI). This integration opens up a wide range of possibilities for building LLM-powered applications that leverage the capabilities of the Azure cloud platform.

• Couchbase: MCP enables seamless interaction with data stored in Couchbase clusters, allowing developers to build LLM-powered applications that can access and process data stored in Couchbase’s NoSQL database.

• Elasticsearch: MCP supports querying data within Elasticsearch, enabling developers to build LLM-powered applications that can search and analyze data stored in Elasticsearch’s powerful search and analytics engine.

Through these servers, developers can interact with underlying APIs using natural language. This capability dramatically simplifies the process of interacting with complex systems, allowing developers to focus on the high-level logic of their applications rather than the low-level details of API calls. For example, one can instruct an Algolia MCP server to perform a variety of actions:

• Search the index for all products with a brand of “Nike” and a price below 100.
• Add a JSON object to the blog_posts index.
• Update the searchable attributes of the recipes index to include ingredients.
• Configure the index to rank nebula_award winners higher.

These examples illustrate the power and flexibility of MCP, demonstrating how it can be used to build a wide range of LLM-powered applications.

Introduction of the C# SDK

Both servers and clients require programming languages to be written. SDKs for languages such as Python, Java, and Go are already available. Now, C# has its own SDK, enabling .NET applications, services, and libraries to implement and interact with MCP clients and servers. This is a significant development for the .NET ecosystem, as it allows .NET developers to seamlessly integrate LLMs and AI tools into their existing applications and workflows.

The C# SDK provides a comprehensive set of tools and libraries for building MCP clients and servers. It simplifies the process of interacting with MCP-compliant services, allowing developers to focus on the core logic of their applications.

The C# SDK is designed to be easy to use and integrate into existing .NET projects. It provides a clear and concise API that abstracts away the complexities of the underlying MCP protocol.

To get started with the C# SDK, you simply need to use NuGet and run the following command: