Remote MCP Servers

Move past a local stdio process and expose MCP over the network so another machine can connect.

stdio is one laptop, one host process. A remote server listens on a port so a teammate, a CI job, or a hosted agent can connect. The tools stay the same. The transport changes.

Why remote exists

The server must see a private network the laptop is not on.
You want one long-lived process, not a spawn per IDE window.
The host only supports HTTP MCP for that connector.

Transports, in practice

Remote MCP uses Streamable HTTP. Bind and port go on run(), not on the constructor. Keep a stdio entry point for local Cursor; switch transport only when you mean to listen on a port.

import os

# Same MCPServer as the stdio lessons.
if __name__ == "__main__":
    if os.environ.get("MCP_TRANSPORT") == "http":
        mcp.run(transport="streamable-http", host="127.0.0.1", port=8000)
    else:
        mcp.run()  # stdio — default for local Cursor

Bind to 127.0.0.1 while you experiment. Exposing 0.0.0.0 without auth is a public tool API.

What the host config looks like

Instead of command and args, the host stores a URL (and often headers). Exact JSON keys differ by product. You will put HTTPS in front in the next lesson — do not ship raw HTTP on the public internet.

Check it

Run the server with the HTTP transport your SDK documents.
Open the health or MCP endpoint from the same machine (curl or the inspector).
Point a second client at that URL only after it works locally.

Next: process manager, reverse proxy, HTTPS.