Structure

The MCP Description (mcpdesc) specification defines a portable, machine-readable format for describing the capabilities of a Model Context Protocol (MCP) server — its tools, resources, prompts, transports, security, and metadata — as a static document.

Canonical source

The canonical repository for the MCP Description specification is mcpdesc/mcpdesc-specification. The historical v0.7.0 release source is archived in cisco-open/mcptoolkit-contract. Where the documentation pages for a specific MCP Description specification differ from its linked versioned source, that source wins.

Versions

Version	Status
0.8.0	Stable	Latest stable
0.7.0	Stable	Previous

See the changelog for the full version history, and the format overview for a friendly introduction.

Retrieving the spec programmatically

For AI assistants and build tools, the whole specification is available as a single file and as a machine-readable index:

• /specification/latest/mcpdesc.md — the complete latest specification in one Markdown document (per-version: /specification/<version>/mcpdesc.md).
• /specification/index.json — every version, the current stable and candidate channels (plus latest and next compatibility aliases), and each version’s full-file, canonical source, and schema URLs.