Turn Claude Into Your Ultimate AI Hub – Connect Anything with Custom MCP Servers!

Key Takeaways

this is the simplest way to create your own mCP server from scratch in the last video you learned how mCP works and how to connect mCP clients like Claude desktop with mCP servers to access databases the solution was already capable of reading and writing database entries independently not exactly good news for all the database admins out there right we also gave claw access to the web and your local file system which is cool but could also lead to interesting and some times alarming results but why stop there imagine building your own mCP server that can communicate with your favorite apis project management tools or time tracking software or even better imagine connecting it to the Pokemon API which includes detailed data for over 4,000 Pokémon but why should you even care about building your own mCP server we already have a large list of mCP servers readily available for you to use effortlessly all we need to do is add the configuration to clae desktop and enjoy the new functionality but what if the available mCP servers don't fit our specific use case or we prefer not to rely on external source code at first glance the implementation might seem complex and overwhelming however the underlying idea is actually straightforward and can be broken down into two simple Concepts resources and tools let's illustrate this with a simple example imagine we ask Claude to provide the stats for a single Pokémon Pikachu Claude responds by asking if it can use our brand new tool get stats which we'll Implement shortly but how does Claude even know that such a tool exists and how does it understand how to use it for this every mCP server must Implement four key methods list resources read resource list tools and call tool we need list resources in mCP servers to provide a structured catalog of available resources enabling tools to discover and interact with them efficiently we need read resource to fetch detailed data about a specific item so tools can use it we need list tools to provide a catalog of all available tools their functions and input requirements so they can be easily discovered and utilized and lastly we need call tool to execute a specific tool with the provided input allowing us to perform the desired operation and retrieve the results let's build a custom mCP server together in the next 4 minutes you'll see it's easier than you might think let's start by creating the blueprint for our mCP server we can do this effortlessly using the create mCP server command by using the Double Dash paath parameter we can specify the name of our project in this case we'll call it Pokemon server to keep things simple we'll stick with the defaults and won't add a description or any extra details once the server is created the command automatically detects that the clae app is installed and asks if we want to integrate the new server configuration into Claud setup to verify what's been automatically added we copy the path of the configuration file and open it with our favorite editor inside we can see that our new Pokemon server has been registered it's simply a UV command with arguments specifying the directory next we navigate into the directory inside we'll find a source directory containing a file named server.py this is the only file we'll need to modify to make things interesting and learn the most let's start completely from scratch we'll delete all the existing content in server.py for now we'll hardcode a list of Pokemon to keep things simple and avoid diving into API call logic as a starting point we'll have just one entry our beloved Pikachu you probably remember the four methods we need to implement the first one is list resources as you can see we simply return a list of so-called resources each entry contains a unique URL a name a mime type and a description let's add the necessary Imports and try it out directly we can call this method to see what mCP clients would get this way you can really understand what's happening under the hood let's start the script and you'll see the structure of the data if you're wondering the condition ensures that the code runs only when the script is executed directly we get a list of Pokémon resources this is enough for the mCP client to identify which Pokémons exist for more details about a specific resource an mCP client would call the next method do you remember what it was right it's the read resource method this method takes the unique URL and returns all the details of the resource in the case of Pikachu it doesn't just return the name and description but also the stats now it's time for our next method The Fabulous list tool method with the list tools method we tell mCP clients which tools exist in our case it's just one tool with the name get stats we Define the name of the method a short description and very importantly the input schema which specifies the parameters it expects all right let's try this method out as well as you can see it returns a list of tools do you remember what the last method was exactly it's the call tool method this method is a bit longer because we need logic to determine which tool should be executed for this we add a simple condition if the tool name equals get stats it Returns the stats of the Pokémon including its name and its Det detailed stats let's try it out if everything works as expected we can move on to the final steps connecting it to the mCP client and trying it out in Claude desktop looks good it's returning the stats for Pikachu now we replace the main method to handle communication streams between the mCP client and our server we use the standard IO server to manage the input and output streams and pass them to the app.run function this ensures the mCP server is ready to handle requests process input and send output streams back to the client efficiently great now we have everything ready to start claw desktop once claw desktop starts we can already see on the right hand side that it has detected one tool when we click on the tool icon it lists all available mCP tools and we can see the get stats tool from our Pokémon server perfect Let's test it out we type please provide the stats for Pikachu Claude then asks us if it's allowed to access the get stats tool from the Pokemon server we agree and immediately we get the result Pikachu stats appear and that's it we've successfully built and tested our own custom mCP server as you can see it's not as hard as it seems now it's your turn to give it a try if you have any questions or run into any issues feel free to ask in the comments below I'm happy to help good luck