This document explains how to communicate and collaborate within the Model Context Protocol (MCP) project.

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Communication Channels

In short:
  • Discord: For real-time or ad-hoc discussions.
  • GitHub Discussions: For structured, longer-form discussions.
  • GitHub Issues: For actionable tasks, bug reports, and feature requests.
  • For security-sensitive issues: Follow the process in SECURITY.md.
All communication is governed by our Code of Conduct. We expect all participants to maintain respectful, professional, and inclusive interactions across all channels.

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Discord

For real-time contributor discussion and collaboration. The server is designed around MCP contributors and is not intended to be a place for general MCP support. The Discord server will have both public and private channels. Join the Discord server here.

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Public Channels (Default)

  • Purpose: Open community engagement, collaborative development, and transparent project coordination.
  • Primary use cases:
    • Public SDK and tooling development: All development, from ideation to release planning, happens in public channels (e.g., #typescript-sdk-dev, #inspector-dev).
    • Working and interest group discussions (#client-implementors, #agents-wg, etc.)
      • Working Group: Some specific goal or project in mind (such as an SDK, inspector, registry, server-identity, load-balancing, etc).
      • Interest Group: An abstract gathering of folks that might raise a range of various topics. Some might get actioned on as one-offs, others might spin into Working Groups.
    • Community onboarding and contribution guidance.
    • Community feedback and collaborative brainstorming.
    • Public office hours and maintainer availability.
  • Avoid:
    • MCP user support: participants are expected to read official documentation and start new GitHub Discussions for questions or support.
    • Service or product marketing: interactions on this Discord are expected to be vendor-neutral and not used for brand-building or sales. Mentions of brands or products are discouraged outside of being used as examples or responses to conversations that start off focused on the specification.

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Private channels (Exceptions)

  • Purpose: Confidential coordination and sensitive matters that cannot be discussed publicly. Access will be restricted to designated maintainers.
  • Strict criteria for private use:
    • Security incidents (CVEs, protocol vulnerabilities).
    • People matters (maintainer-related discussions, code of conduct policies).
    • Select channels will be configured to be read-only. This can be good for example for maintainer decision making.
    • Coordination requiring immediate or otherwise focused response with a limited audience.
  • Transparency:
    • All technical and governance decisions affecting the community must be documented in GitHub Discussions and/or Issues, and will be labeled with notes.
    • Some matters related to individual contributors may remain private when appropriate (e.g., personal circumstances, disciplinary actions, or other sensitive individual matters).
    • Private channels are to be used as temporary “incident rooms,” not for routine development.
Any significant discussion on Discord that leads to a potential decision or proposal must be moved to a GitHub Discussion or GitHub Issue to create a persistent, searchable record. Proposals will then be promoted to full-fledged PRs with associated work items (GitHub Issues) as needed.

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GitHub Discussions

For structured, long-form discussion and debate on project direction, features, improvements, and community topics. When to use:
  • Project roadmap planning and milestone discussions
  • Announcements and release communications
  • Community polls and consensus-building processes
  • Feature requests with context and rationale
    • If a particular repository does not have GitHub Discussions enabled, feel free to open a GitHub Issue instead.

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GitHub Issues

For bug reports, feature tracking, and actionable development tasks. When to use:
  • Submit SEP proposals (following the SEP guidelines)
  • Bug reports with reproducible steps
  • Documentation improvements with specific scope
  • CI/CD problems and infrastructure issues
  • Release tasks and milestone tracking

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Security Issues

Do not post security issues publicly. Instead:
  1. Use the private security reporting process. For protocol-level security issues, follow the process in SECURITY.md in the modelcontextprotocol GitHub repository.
  2. Contact lead and/or core maintainers directly.
  3. Follow responsible disclosure guidelines.

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Decision Records

All MCP decisions are documented and captured in public channels. When documenting decisions, we will retain as much context as possible:
  • Decision makers
  • Background context and motivation
  • Options that were considered
  • Rationale for the chosen approach
  • Implementation steps