Don't Build Your MCP Server as an API Wrapper

Anthropic recently published a useful post on building agents that reach production systems with MCP: Building agents that reach production systems with MCP The most important line for MCP server builders is not "build an MCP server." It is the design guidance underneath it: Group tools around intent, not endpoints. That distinction is easy to underestimate. If you already have a REST API, the obvious first version of your MCP server is a thin wrapper around it: list_responses get_response updat