CCA Prep
CCAR-FUA

Lesson 2.4Lesson 11 of 30

MCP servers in Claude Code and agents

Integrate MCP servers into Claude Code and agent workflows

MCP servers in Claude Code and agentsWho needs this MCP server?the whole teamProject .mcp.jsoncommitted · "${GITHUB_TOKEN}"only me / experimentUser ~/.claude.jsonnot sharedTools from all servers are available at once · catalogs → MCP resources ·standard integration → community server

Key points

  1. 1Shared team servers go in the project .mcp.json (committed). Personal or experimental ones go in the user's ~/.claude.json.
  2. 2Keep secrets out of git with environment variable expansion: "${GITHUB_TOKEN}" in .mcp.json.
  3. 3Tools from all configured servers are discovered at connection and available at the same time.
  4. 4If the agent keeps using Grep instead of your MCP tool, improve the MCP tool's description. Expose catalogs as MCP resources so the agent doesn't explore with tool calls.
  5. 5For standard integrations (e.g. Jira) use an existing community server; build a custom one only for team-specific workflows.
What the exam guide checks here

Objective wording from the exam guide (English).

  • 2.4.K1Scope: project .mcp.json for shared team tooling vs user ~/.claude.json for personal/experimental
  • 2.4.K2Environment variable expansion in .mcp.json (${GITHUB_TOKEN}) keeps secrets out of git
  • 2.4.K3Tools from all configured servers are discovered at connection and available simultaneously
  • 2.4.K4MCP resources expose content catalogs to reduce exploratory tool calls
  • 2.4.S1Configure shared servers in project .mcp.json with env var expansion
  • 2.4.S2Configure personal servers in user ~/.claude.json
  • 2.4.S3Improve MCP tool descriptions so the agent stops preferring built-ins like Grep
  • 2.4.S4Prefer community MCP servers for standard integrations (Jira); custom only for team-specific workflows
  • 2.4.S5Expose catalogs as MCP resources instead of exploratory calls

Lock it in

Answer scenario questions on this topic. Every option comes with an explanation.

Practise 2.4 · 23 questions