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Getting started

The quickest way to get a feel for MCP Description (mcpdesc) is to open it in the Live Editor and experiment — no install required. Once you’re comfortable with the format, capture one of your own MCP servers with the mcpcontract CLI.

Start visually: open the Live MCP Description Editor and edit a description right in your browser. Tweak tools, transports, and metadata to see how a description is shaped, with live validation as you type. The editor runs entirely in your browser; nothing you type is uploaded to our servers.

When you’re ready to describe a real server, install the mcpcontract CLI and extract the capabilities of a live MCP server — no project setup required:

Terminal window
# Install from npm
npm install -g @cisco_open/mcptoolkit-contract
# Extract capabilities from a live MCP server into an MCP Description
mcpcontract dump \
--transport streamable-http \
--url https://learn.microsoft.com/api/mcp \
--format yaml \
--output ms-learn.yaml

You now have ms-learn.yaml — an MCP Description document describing every tool the server exposes. Open it back in the Live Editor to explore it visually, or validate it, generate documentation, and compare it against other versions from the CLI.

For the full five-minute walkthrough — including validation, documentation, and comparing versions to detect breaking changes — follow the canonical 101 Tutorial in the mcptoolkit-contract repository.