Welcome to the 🤗 Model Context Protocol (MCP) Course

Welcome to the most exciting topic in AI today: Model Context Protocol (MCP)!

This free course will take you on a journey, from beginner to informed, in understanding, using, and building applications with MCP.

This first unit will help you onboard:

• Discover the course’s syllabus.
• Get more information about the certification process and the schedule.
• Get to know the team behind the course.
• Create your account.
• Sign-up to our Discord server, and meet your classmates and us.

Let’s get started!

What to expect from this course?

In this course, you will:

• 📖 Study Model Context Protocol in theory, design, and practice.
• 🧑‍💻 Learn to use established MCP SDKs and frameworks.
• 💾 Share your projects and explore applications created by the community.
• 🏆 Participate in challenges where you will evaluate your MCP implementations against other students’.
• 🎓 Earn a certificate of completion by completing assignments.

And more!

At the end of this course, you’ll understand how MCP works and how to build your own AI applications that leverage external data and tools using the latest MCP standards.

Don’t forget to sign up to the course!

What does the course look like?

The course is composed of:

• Foundational Units: where you learn MCP concepts in theory.
• Hands-on: where you’ll learn to use established MCP SDKs to build your applications. These hands-on sections will have pre-configured environments.
• Use case assignments: where you’ll apply the concepts you’ve learned to solve a real-world problem that you’ll choose.
• Collaborations: We’re collaborating with Hugging Face’s partners to give you the latest MCP implementations and tools.

This course is a living project, evolving with your feedback and contributions! Feel free to open issues and PRs in GitHub, and engage in discussions in our Discord server.

What’s the syllabus?

Here is the general syllabus for the course. A more detailed list of topics will be released with each unit.

Chapter	Topic	Description
0	Onboarding	Set you up with the tools and platforms that you will use.
1	MCP Fundamentals, Architecture and Core Concepts	Explain core concepts, architecture, and components of Model Context Protocol. Show a simple use case using MCP.
2	End-to-end Use case: MCP in Action	Build a simple end-to-end MCP application that you can share with the community.
3	Deployed Use case: MCP in Action	Build a deployed MCP application using the Hugging Face ecosystem and partners’ services.
4	Bonus Units	Bonus units to help you get more out of the course, working with partners’ libraries and services.

What are the prerequisites?

To be able to follow this course, you should have:

• Basic understanding of AI and LLM concepts
• Familiarity with software development principles and API concepts
• Experience with at least one programming language (Python or TypeScript examples will be shown)

If you don’t have any of these, don’t worry! Here are some resources that can help you:

• LLM Course will guide you through the basics of using and building with LLMs.
• Agents Course will guide you through building AI agents with LLMs.

What tools do I need?

You only need 2 things:

• A computer with an internet connection.
• An account: to access the course resources and create projects. If you don’t have an account yet, you can create one here (it’s free).

The Certification Process

You can choose to follow this course in audit mode, or do the activities and get one of the two certificates we’ll issue. If you audit the course, you can participate in all the challenges and do assignments if you want, and you don’t need to notify us.

The certification process is completely free:

• To get a certification for fundamentals: you need to complete Unit 1 of the course. This is intended for students that want to get up to date with the latest trends in MCP, without the need to build a full application.
• To get a certificate of completion: you need to complete the use case units (2 and 3). This is intended for students that want to build a full application and share it with the community.

What is the recommended pace?

Each chapter in this course is designed to be completed in 1 week, with approximately 3-4 hours of work per week.

Since there’s a deadline, we provide you a recommended pace:

How to get the most out of the course?

To get the most out of the course, we have some advice:

1. Join study groups in Discord: Studying in groups is always easier. To do that, you need to join our discord server and verify your account.
2. Do the quizzes and assignments: The best way to learn is through hands-on practice and self-assessment.
3. Define a schedule to stay in sync: You can use our recommended pace schedule below or create yours.

Who are we

About the authors:

Ben Burtenshaw

Ben is a Machine Learning Engineer at Hugging Face who focuses on building LLM applications, with post training and agentic approaches. Follow Ben on the Hub to see his latest projects.

I found a bug, or I want to improve the course

Contributions are welcome 🤗

• If you found a bug 🐛 in a notebook, please open an issue and describe the problem.
• If you want to improve the course, you can open a Pull Request.
• If you want to add a full section or a new unit, the best is to open an issue and describe what content you want to add before starting to write it so that we can guide you.

I still have questions

Please ask your question in our discord server #mcp-course-questions.

Now that you have all the information, let’s get on board ⛵

< > Update on GitHub