MCP Server

The Model Context Protocol .NET Template provides a ready‑made foundation for developers to launch MCP‑enabled services with minimal friction. By installing the template via , you receive a fully wired .NET application that exposes an MCP server over either standard I/O or HTTP, depending on your chosen mode. This flexibility allows the same binary to be used in local development environments, containerized deployments, or as a lightweight agent on edge devices.

At its core, the server listens for MCP messages—structured JSON payloads that describe a desired tool invocation or prompt. Once received, the server resolves the requested operation against its registered tools (in this case, a simple echo function) and returns the result. Because MCP is language‑agnostic and transports over plain text or HTTP, any LLM client—Claude, GPT‑4, or a custom assistant—can interact with the server without needing bespoke SDKs. This decouples AI logic from domain‑specific data sources, enabling a clean separation of concerns.

Key capabilities include:

• Dual transport support: run the same code in Stdio mode for local debugging or HTTP mode for remote access, making the template suitable for both prototyping and production.
• Tool discovery via reflection: tools are automatically registered from the assembly, reducing boilerplate and allowing developers to add new functionality simply by annotating static methods.
• Extensible hosting integration: the package hooks into Microsoft Aspire, giving access to advanced deployment patterns such as service discovery and health checks.

Typical use cases span from building internal knowledge‑base assistants that query company databases, to creating microservices that expose domain logic (e.g., order processing or inventory checks) as MCP tools. In a real‑world scenario, an AI assistant could ask the server to “fetch customer order history,” and the server would invoke a tool that queries a SQL database, returning structured results back to the assistant for natural‑language rendering.

The template’s standout advantage is its zero‑configuration entry point: developers jump straight into writing domain logic, rely on built‑in tooling for transport and hosting, and immediately obtain a fully functional MCP server. This accelerates time‑to‑value for teams looking to embed AI capabilities into existing .NET ecosystems without reinventing the protocol plumbing.