Topic
Model Context Protocol (MCP)
4 posts on model context protocol (mcp) — part of glossary on the n4n AI blog.
What is MCP? Anthropic's Model Context Protocol
A technical definition of Anthropic's Model Context Protocol (MCP), covering architecture, transport, tooling patterns, and common misconceptions for engineers building agent systems.
MCP vs function calling: what's the difference
A practitioner's comparison of MCP vs function calling across capabilities, cost, latency, ergonomics, and ecosystem — with a clear verdict for each use case.
How MCP servers work: a beginner's guide
A practical guide to Model Context Protocol servers — how they work, how to build one, and the pitfalls that trip up engineers in production.
Building your first MCP server in Python
A hands-on tutorial for building your first MCP server in Python, covering prerequisites, project setup, resource and tool implementation, and testing with the MCP inspector.
More topics in glossary
- Structured Outputs & JSON Mode19
- AI Agents Fundamentals12
- Hallucination in LLMs11
- Sampling Parameters: Top-p, Top-k & Penalties11
- Context Window & Context Length10
- Fine-Tuning Fundamentals9
- Foundation Models: Base vs Instruct vs Chat9
- Model Families & Naming Conventions: GPT-5, Claude, Gemini 3, Llama 4, Mistral, DeepSeek, Qwen, Grok9
- Grounding & Fact-Checking in AI8
- LLM Benchmarks: MMLU, HumanEval, SWE-bench & GPQA8
- Max Tokens, Stop Sequences & Output Truncation8
- Quantization Formats: GGUF, GPTQ, AWQ & INT4/INT88