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{mcpdesc}

Terminology

Clear, shared vocabulary keeps the project easy to talk about. This page is the reader-facing summary; maintainers and contributors follow the fuller Terminology & Positioning guide kept with the project’s governance docs.

Quick glossary

Section titled “Quick glossary”
Term Use it for
MCP Description The format — a portable, machine-readable way to describe MCP servers.
mcpdesc The short, technical name for MCP Description — used for files, schemas, packages, commands, domains.
MCP Description document / mcpdesc document A concrete YAML or JSON file written in the format.
MCP Description specification The formal, versioned definition of the format (e.g. v0.7.0).
MCP Toolkit One tool suite that reads and writes the format; an open-source project initiated by Cisco DevNet, maintained at cisco-open.
mcpdesc Editor The open-source editor component behind the Live Editor (tool id: mcpeditor, @cisco_open/mcptoolkit-editor).
Live Editor The hosted, browser-based editor experience at mcpdesc.org for mcpdesc documents (formal: Live MCP Description Editor).
{mcpdesc} The brand / wordmark — the project, community, and visual identity.
the {mcpdesc} project The initiative as a whole — format, spec, docs, tools, site, governance.
the {mcpdesc} Community The people around it — maintainers, contributors, users, adopters.

What it is

Section titled “What it is”

The {mcpdesc} project is an independent open source initiative promoting an open, portable, machine-readable description format for MCP servers. The goal is to help the MCP ecosystem converge on interoperable server descriptions.

MCP Description (mcpdesc) is that format: it declares what an MCP server offers — its tools, resources, prompts, transports, security, and metadata — in a single static document. Think OpenAPI, but for the Model Context Protocol.

  • The formal name is MCP Description; the short technical name is mcpdesc; the brand/wordmark is {mcpdesc}.
  • The format is for describing servers. Validating, documenting, mocking, and testing are things tools do with a description — not properties of the format itself.

Documents

Section titled “Documents”

A concrete file in the format is an MCP Description document (formal) or an mcpdesc document (short). The recommended file extension is .mcpdesc.yaml or .mcpdesc.json.

Please do not pluralize the format name as “MCP Descriptions” — use “MCP Description documents” or “mcpdesc documents”.

The specification

Section titled “The specification”

The MCP Description specification is the formal, versioned definition of the format. The current version is 0.7.0, maintained today in the cisco-open contract repository. A community-hosted specification at spec.mcpdesc.org is planned.

The community

Section titled “The community”

The {mcpdesc} project is led by its maintainers and open to contributions from the broader community — contributors, users, adopters, and tool builders. Contributors retain copyright to their work and license it under Apache-2.0; there is no CLA and no copyright assignment.

The project is not a Cisco product, service, or official Cisco standardization effort. “MCP” and “Model Context Protocol” refer to the open protocol ecosystem; this project is not affiliated with or endorsed by Anthropic or other MCP ecosystem vendors unless explicitly stated.

The tools

Section titled “The tools”
  • MCP Toolkit — one of the first tool suites that use mcpdesc documents to inspect, document, compare, mock, validate, and test MCP servers. It is an open-source project initiated by Cisco DevNet, released under Apache-2.0 and maintained at cisco-open — @cisco_open/mcptoolkit-* package names.
  • Live Editor — the hosted, browser-based editor experience at mcpdesc.org for authoring, validating, previewing, and exporting mcpdesc documents (formal: Live MCP Description Editor). It embeds the open-source mcpdesc Editor component (tool id: mcpeditor, @cisco_open/mcptoolkit-editor).

Other tools that read or write mcpdesc are welcome in the neutral tools catalog.

Wordmark

Section titled “Wordmark”

The braced form {mcpdesc} is the project’s brand and wordmark — use it for the project, community, and visual identity. Use the plain name mcpdesc for technical references (files, packages, commands), and MCP Description for the formal format name.