Microsoft and Anthropic Develop C# SDK for Model Context Protocol

Microsoft has partnered with Anthropic to develop an official C# SDK for the Model Context Protocol (MCP), announced on their website. This collaboration aims to facilitate the integration of AI models into C# applications, leveraging the popularity and performance of the C# programming language.

The SDK is being developed as an open-source project under the modelcontextprotocol GitHub organization, making it accessible for developers to collaborate and contribute. Available as a NuGet package named ModelContextProtocol, the SDK builds on the foundation laid by the mcpdotnet project initiated by Peder Holdgaard Pederson.

MCP, created by Anthropic, is an open protocol designed to enable integration between large language model (LLM) applications and external tools and data sources. It allows AI applications to connect to external resources, enhancing their capabilities. The protocol's flexibility and extensibility make it suitable for creating custom tools and data sources for LLMs.

The introduction of the C# SDK is expected to benefit many Microsoft products, such as Copilot Studio and VS Code's GitHub Copilot agent mode, which have already added support for MCP. The SDK is currently in preview, and developers are encouraged to contribute to its evolution through the GitHub repository.