Build Your First MCP Server in TypeScript: The Integration Layer Every AI App Needs in 2026 If you've spent any time in the AI development space this year, you've probably heard of the Model Context Protocol (MCP). Anthropic open-sourced it in late 2024. By mid-2025, OpenAI deprecated its proprietary Assistants API in favor of it. Google's ADK, LangGraph, CrewAI, and Microsoft's Agent Framework all support it. GitHub's Octoverse report shows over 693,000 new LLM SDK repositories in the last 12 months alone. MCP isn't a trend anymore. It's infrastructure. But most articles about MCP stop at "it's like a USB-C port for AI" and never show you how to actually build one. That ends here. In this article, you'll build a working MCP server in TypeScript that exposes real tools to any MCP-compatible AI client — Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor, Windsurf, VS Code Copilot, you name it. Why MCP Matters Right Now Before we write code, let's understand the problem MCP solves. AI agents are only as useful as what they can reach.…