The Host: Claude Desktop & IDEs
The AI app the user actually opens and talks to.
Meet the Host
The host is the AI app a person actually opens and talks to. Think Claude Desktop or an AI-powered code editor. It is the front door to everything MCP.
The Host Owns the Model
A host is the only part of MCP that holds a connection to the language model. Servers never talk to the model directly, only the host does.
All lessons in this course
- The Host: Claude Desktop & IDEs
- The Client: One Link Per Server
- The Server: Where Tools Live
- Tracing a Request End to End