Part 7 of 15 • 🟡 Intermediate • ⏱️ 90 minutes

Getting Started with Model Context Protocol (MCP) in watsonx Orchestrate: Connecting Agents to External Sidecars

Understanding MCP architecture, implementing STDIO transport, and resolving common discovery errors.

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Step 1: Write Tool Logic (simple_mcp_server.py)

from mcp.server import Server
from mcp.server.stdio import stdio_server
import mcp.types as types
import asyncio

mcp = Server("sample-ticket-mcp-server")

@mcp.tool()
async def search_support_tickets(priority: str = "HIGH") -> str:
    """
    Query enterprise support tickets by priority level.

    Args:
        priority: Filter level ('CRITICAL', 'HIGH', 'MEDIUM', 'LOW').
    """
    return f"""
🎫 Active Tickets [{priority} Priority]:
  1. #TCK-901: Database latency spike in ca-tor (Assigned: Site Reliability)
  2. #TCK-904: SSL Certificate renewal for api.internal (Assigned: Security)
"""

async def main():
    async with stdio_server() as (read_stream, write_stream):
        await mcp.run(
            read_stream,
            write_stream,
            mcp.create_initialization_options()
        )

if __name__ == "__main__":
    asyncio.run(main())

Step 2: Dependencies (requirements.txt)

mcp>=1.0.0
ibm-watsonx-orchestrate>=2.9.0

Step 3: Agent Manifest (agent.yaml)

spec_version: v1
kind: native
name: mcp_support_agent
title: "MCP Support Triage"
description: "Integrates with external systems using Model Context Protocol (MCP)."
model: ibm/granite-3-8b-instruct
instructions: |
  You are a support operations agent. Connect to the MCP ticket server
  and query tickets for the user.
tools:
  - search_support_tickets

Step 4: Live Execution

orchestrate toolkits add --kind mcp --package-root ./mcp_discovery_test

[INFO] - Discovering tools from MCP server 'sample-ticket-mcp-server'...
[INFO] - Found 1 tool: search_support_tickets
[SUCCESS] - MCP Toolkit added successfully.

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💡 Pro Tips & Architecture Insights

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