Sources and credits
Every protocol fact in this course was checked against MCP specification revision 2026-07-28 in October 2026. Numbers about cost and attacks come from the sources below, which are not all equally strong.
Two kinds of source
Primary
The specification, the official SDK, and first-hand engineering write-ups and peer-reviewed papers. Rely on these for how the protocol works.
Practitioner
Blogs, community measurements and vendor comparisons. Useful for direction, not proof: reproduce a number on your own stack before relying on it.
Primary sources
MCP specification
SDK and related protocols
Research and engineering
Practitioner sources
How to read them
Most comparison and cost sources are practitioner blogs, several of them vendor-adjacent. Treat their numbers as direction, not proof; the Phase 4 lab on the roadmap measures them for real.