We recently hosted MCP Live!, a free half-day event featuring the people building the Model Context Protocol and putting it into practice.
The Model Context Protocol (MCP) is the open standard for connecting AI models to tools and data. MCP servers let agents work with external data sources and capabilities across clients such as VS Code, GitHub Copilot, Claude, and other AI applications.
Across the event, speakers explored:
- The state of MCP, the latest specification updates, and the protocol roadmap
- MCP server and client development at GitHub and in Visual Studio Code
- Enterprise-ready tools, authentication, governance, and security
- Interactive MCP Apps built with FastMCP
- Event-driven agents powered by MCP triggers and events
Watch the complete MCP Live playlist, or browse the individual session recordings below along with links to related documentation, code, and resources.
State of MCP
Join Caitie McCaffrey for a look at the state of the Model Context Protocol and the major changes introduced in the latest 2026-07-28 MCP specification release. Learn about the protocol's updated roadmap and emerging protocol priorities, including Agentic Messaging Primitives, and how they enable new patterns for agent-to-agent communication. Get a preview of where the protocol is headed and what these changes mean for developers building the next generation of AI agents.
- View the slides
- Follow Caitie on: LinkedIn | X
- MCP specification 2026-07-28 release
- MCP conformance tests
- MCP Server Cards working group
A unified MCP layer with Toolboxes in Microsoft Foundry
Viswajeeet Balaji shows how Toolboxes in Microsoft Foundry make MCP enterprise-ready. It supports runtime tool search, MCP skill extensions, and the latest MCP 07-28 specification—while letting teams bring OpenAPI tools and A2A agents, expose them through MCP, and reuse the same unified configuration across agents. A centralized governance layer adds consistent authentication and guardrails without requiring every agent to rebuild its integrations.
- View the slides
- Follow Viswajeeet on: LinkedIn
- Documentation: Toolboxes in Microsoft Foundry
- Blog post: Building agents that act on your behalf with Toolboxes
MCP: Server, Client & Protocol at GitHub
Sam Morrow is a co-creator of GitHub's MCP, an MCP Spec Maintainer, and Copilot client developer. Find out the latest MCP features his team is shipping on both the server and client side, as well as the parts of the spec that he's most excited about. Learn about some of the recent challenges, future plans, and insights from working across the MCP stack, and get a sneak peek at what's coming next.
- GitHub MCP Server
- Follow Sam on: LinkedIn | X
Building MCP servers with VS Code — Level up your MCP
Harald Kirschner shows how MCP servers have evolved beyond local tool calls into richer, production-ready agent capabilities. Through a live VS Code demo, he builds an agentic achievement tracker that uses tools, elicitation, progress notifications, an interactive MCP App, stateless HTTP, and Agent Plugins—showing how to design, debug, and distribute modern MCP integrations.
- View the slides
- Follow Harald on: LinkedIn | X
- Documentation: MCP servers in VS Code
- Official MCP Registry
- MCP Registry repository
Evolution of MCP auth
Den Delimarsky, Lead Maintainer of MCP and Member of Technical Staff at Anthropic, discusses how MCP authorization reached its current state: the original OAuth profile, protected resource metadata, the shift in client registration with servers, and enterprise-managed authorization. He also covers what the maintainers are working on next, including agent identity.
- View the slides
- Follow Den on: LinkedIn
MCP auth: Stop registering, Start linking
Sam Bellen explains how Dynamic Client Registration made every MCP client mint a fresh client_id with every server it met, a per-server credential tax that quietly breaks down once clients start connecting to servers opportunistically. He shows how Client ID Metadata Documents flip the model: your client_id becomes a URL the server fetches on demand, giving you one durable identity that works everywhere, with a live demo of the flow end to end.
- View the slides
- Follow Sam on: LinkedIn
- DCR vs. CIMD demo with xmcp and Auth0
When chatbots grow buttons: Building MCP apps with FastMCP
Chat is great, but sometimes the answer is a button, a chart, or a form. MCP Apps let servers render interactive interfaces directly inside AI clients. Jeremiah Lowin, creator of FastMCP, shows how to build them in Python with FastMCP and Prefab, from simple components to dynamically generated interfaces.
- Follow Jeremiah on: LinkedIn
- FastMCP
- FastMCP authentication
Event-driven agents, powered by MCP
Clare Liguori discusses the MCP Triggers & Events experimental extension, which lets agents poll MCP servers for events and get webhook triggers. She explores the new agent architectures the extension enables and presents a live demo.
Microsoft