Community-maintained FDE reference. Not an official Vercel or Anthropic project. About this project
Docs for Non-technical
Conceptual overviews without implementation detail. 27 pages tagged non-technical. See all audiences.
Overview 1
Getting started 1
Internals 2
- MCP internals overview How the host, client, and server roles fit together, what each one owns, and why the 2026-07-28 revision makes every MCP request self-contained.
- Capability primitives The MCP server primitives (tools, resources, prompts) and auxiliary ones (sampling, elicitation, tasks, logging), with the control model and hosting rules for each on Vercel.
Patterns 6
- Adapter The adapter pattern: a thin MCP server that wraps one untouched backend, with schema-expressed bounds, a scoped read-only credential, and sanitized output, mapped onto Vercel.
- Sidecar The sidecar pattern: run risky work in Vercel Sandbox microVMs with a deny-by-default egress policy, a pinned image, no ambient credentials, and size-capped output.
- Facade The facade pattern: one MCP server fronting many backends behind a namespaced tool surface with centralized routing, error containment, and a secret-free audit log.
- Orchestrator The orchestrator pattern: a host that composes several MCP servers into one namespaced tool layer, routes calls, and gates destructive tools behind fail-closed consent.
- Query vs Command The query vs command pattern: split tools into read-only queries and consent-gated, idempotency-keyed commands, with annotations a host can act on.
- Async Jobs The async jobs pattern: return an opaque handle fast, do the work on Vercel Queues or Workflows, report progress, and make result retrieval idempotent and per-principal.
Client-side 2
- Consent UX What a host must show before approving a tool call, why the consent gate is fail-closed, why server annotations are hints, and how MRTR retries pass the same gate.
- Elicitation How a host supplies user input mid-request under 2026-07-28: input_required results, retries with inputResponses, form and URL modes, and the never-elicit-secrets rule.
Examples 14
- Build-it-yourself prompts Copy-paste prompts that rebuild each runnable example with an AI coding agent: same stack, same behaviors, same tests.
- Prompt: minimal-server Generation prompt for minimal-server: the smallest end-to-end MCP server, one echo tool over Streamable HTTP with an Origin allowlist and in-memory tests.
- Prompt: resources-server Generation prompt for resources-server: a resources-only MCP server with static resources and resource templates, no tools.
- Prompt: secure-tools-server Generation prompt for secure-tools-server: one hardened write tool with input validation, default-deny authorization from the verified bearer token, and an Origin allowlist.
- Prompt: db-adapter-server Generation prompt for db-adapter-server: a read-only MCP wrapper around a legacy backend with schema-expressed bounds and sanitized output.
- Prompt: sandbox-isolation-server Generation prompt for sandbox-isolation-server: untrusted commands in a non-persistent Vercel Sandbox microVM behind a frozen egress allowlist and a pinned image.
- Prompt: facade-server Generation prompt for facade-server: one MCP server fronting two backends with namespaced tools, centralized routing, error containment, and an audit log.
- Prompt: query-command-server Generation prompt for query-command-server: read-only query tools plus a consent-gated, idempotency-keyed write command with host-actionable annotations.
- Prompt: async-jobs-server Generation prompt for async-jobs-server: long jobs behind opaque handles with progress, cancellation, per-principal caps, and a private queue consumer route.
- Prompt: least-privilege-server Generation prompt for least-privilege-server: declared per-tool scopes, per-principal tools/list, default-deny authorization from the bearer token, and bounded refund inputs.
- Prompt: auth-server Generation prompt for auth-server: an OAuth-protected MCP server with RFC 9728 discovery metadata, a pinned resource URL, RFC 8707 audience checks, and a fail-closed verifier.
- Prompt: sampling-server Generation prompt for sampling-server: a summarize tool that asks the host model for a completion, kept as a deprecated-pattern reference.
- Prompt: elicitation-server Generation prompt for elicitation-server: a book_meeting tool that pauses mid-call to confirm a bounded topic with the user and handles accept, decline, and cancel.
- Prompt: orchestrator-host Generation prompt for orchestrator-host: a host that runs one client per server, merges namespaced tools, routes calls, and gates destructive tools behind consent.