1. Workshop setup
1m

⚠️ Important note

This workshop companion was designed to be used alongside an instructor for GraphQL Summit 2025. If you would like to learn on your own time at your own pace, check out the course instead: Getting started with MCP and GraphQL.

This workshop companion is still available for reference purposes.

This workshop uses Apollo MCP Server v1.0.0. If you are using later versions, the instructions may differ slightly. For example, v1.1.0 uses port 8000 as the default port instead of 5000.

Overview

In this beginner-friendly session, you'll get hands-on with the Model Context Protocol (MCP) and Apollo's MCP Server to enable assistants like Claude or ChatGPT to safely interact with your internal systems. Learn how to expose secure, task-specific tools that let your assistant operate independently while you stay in control.

What you'll do

  • Set up Apollo MCP Server to connect AI assistants to your backend services
  • Build MCP tools easily with s
  • Test AI assistants executing real actions through connected tools

Who this workshop is for:

  • Developers and teams looking to integrate AI agents into real workflows.

Pre-requisites:

  • Basic experience with APIs.

Let's get set up!

Project setup

Clone the repository

In your terminal, run the following command to clone the repository.

git clone https://github.com/apollographql-education/workshop-mcp-intro.git

Install the Rover CLI

You need at least version v0.35.0 to complete the workshop.

  1. Open up a terminal and run the install command that suits your computer's environment:

    For Linux / Mac OS:

    curl -sSL https://rover.apollo.dev/nix/latest | sh

    For Windows PowerShell installer

    iwr 'https://rover.apollo.dev/win/latest' | iex

    Note: You can find other installation methods in the Apollo documentation.

  2. Verify that the installation completed successfully by running rover anywhere in the terminal.

  3. If it outputs a list of options and subcommands for using , great! The CLI is installed and ready to go.

Download Claude Desktop

We'll be using Claude Desktop as our AI agent or LLM for this workshop.

Download and install it from Claude's official website.

Helpful links

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