Agents in Production
Lesson 5 of 6Advanced 8 min

Connecting agents with the API and MCP

The Model Context Protocol is how agents discover and call tools across products. Its 2026 revision made it stateless and simpler to host.

In this lesson you'll

  • Explain MCP's tools, resources and prompts
  • Know what changed in the 2026-07-28 revision
  • Connect an agent to Kojen safely

MCP is an open protocol for connecting models to external tools and data. Servers expose tools (actions), resources (data) and prompts (templates), and any compatible client, from coding agents to chat apps, can use them [1].

What's new in 2026

The 2026-07-28 revision, current as of November 2026, makes MCP stateless. It removes the initialize handshake and protocol-level sessions, so every request carries its own protocol version and client capabilities, and it adds a server/discover call that servers must implement to advertise their versions and capabilities. Long-running tasks moved out of the core spec into an official extension [1]. In practice, MCP servers are now much easier to run behind ordinary load-balanced HTTP infrastructure.

claude mcp add --transport http kojen https://kojen.ai/api/mcp \
  --header "Authorization: Bearer kojen_…"

In Kojen

The REST API, the MCP server and the Kojen Agent share the same tools, and every call runs as the key's owner with the same permissions as the web app. Keys are shown once, stored only as a hash, and can expire [2].

Key takeaways

  • MCP standardises how agents find and call tools.
  • The 2026-07-28 revision is stateless: no handshake, no sessions.
  • Scope API keys to the agent's job and set expiries.

Practise in the dojo

Create an expiring key under Settings → API Keys & MCP, connect your agent, and ask it to list your projects.

Create an API key

Check your understanding

Score 70 or more to complete the lesson. Progress is saved in this browser.

1. What did MCP's 2026-07-28 revision remove?

Further reading

Sources

Checked against the original sources in November 2026.

  1. [1]Model Context Protocol (2025). Model Context Protocol Specification, revision 2026-07-28. modelcontextprotocol.io.
  2. [2]Kojen (2026). Kojen developer docs: REST API, MCP server and endpoints. kojen.ai.