Building with MCP and the Claude API

Anthropic’s Alex Albert (Claude Relations), John Welsh (Engineering, MCP team), and Michael Cohen (Engineering, Claude API team) discuss the origins of the Model Context Protocol (MCP), the open standard for connecting AI applications to external systems, best practices for getting started with MCP, and how MCP and Claude work together to enable more powerful agentic systems. 00:00 - Introductions 00:30 - What is MCP? 1:30 - The origins of MCP 2:50 - Open sourcing MCP 5:00 - Remote MCP support 6:15: MCP registries 7:40 - Favorite MCPs: Context7 & Playwright 10:40 - Using the Claude API MCP connector 11:50 - Prompt engineering with MCP 14:20 - Best practices for managing context and tools with MCP 18:20 - How John and Michael use MCP servers for project management, home automation, and more 20:00 - Understanding the “emergent” behaviors when Claude and MCP servers work together 22:50 - The future of MCP: growth of the protocol and ecosystem Learn more about MCP: https://modelcontextprotocol.io/docs/getting-started/intro Learn more about the Claude Developer Platform: https://www.claude.com/platform/api Learn more about how to write effective tools for AI agents: https://www.anthropic.com/engineering/writing-tools-for-agents

Alex AlberthostMichael CohenguestJohn Welshguest

Oct 9, 202525mWatch on YouTube ↗

EPISODE INFO

Released: October 9, 2025
Duration: 25m
Channel: Anthropic
Watch on YouTube: ▶ Open ↗

EPISODE DESCRIPTION

Anthropic’s Alex Albert (Claude Relations), John Welsh (Engineering, MCP team), and Michael Cohen (Engineering, Claude API team) discuss the origins of the Model Context Protocol (MCP), the open standard for connecting AI applications to external systems, best practices for getting started with MCP, and how MCP and Claude work together to enable more powerful agentic systems. 00:00 - Introductions 00:30 - What is MCP? 1:30 - The origins of MCP 2:50 - Open sourcing MCP 5:00 - Remote MCP support 6:15: MCP registries 7:40 - Favorite MCPs: Context7 & Playwright 10:40 - Using the Claude API MCP connector 11:50 - Prompt engineering with MCP 14:20 - Best practices for managing context and tools with MCP 18:20 - How John and Michael use MCP servers for project management, home automation, and more 20:00 - Understanding the “emergent” behaviors when Claude and MCP servers work together 22:50 - The future of MCP: growth of the protocol and ecosystem Learn more about MCP: https://modelcontextprotocol.io/docs/getting-started/intro Learn more about the Claude Developer Platform: https://www.claude.com/platform/api Learn more about how to write effective tools for AI agents: https://www.anthropic.com/engineering/writing-tools-for-agents

SPEAKERS

Alex Albert
host
Leads Claude Relations at Anthropic and moderates discussions on building with Claude and MCP.
Michael Cohen
guest
Engineer on Anthropic’s API team focused on Claude API features and MCP integrations.
John Welsh
guest
Works on Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP) team and explains MCP concepts and best practices.

EPISODE SUMMARY

In this episode of Anthropic, featuring Alex Albert and Michael Cohen, Building with MCP and the Claude API explores mCP connects Claude to tools, context, and real-world actions. MCP is a universal protocol for giving Claude external context and tool access beyond the chat transcript, enabling real-world actions like web access or app integrations.

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