In this episode, host Jonathan "J." Tower sat down with Mike Kistler, Principal Program Manager at Microsoft and one of the maintainers of the official MCP C# SDK, following the SDK's v1.0 release. J. and Mike cover what MCP actually is and how it compares to OpenAPI, why implementing the protocol yourself is harder than it looks, and when to reach for the C# SDK versus the MCP implementations in Azure Functions or API Management. They also dig into the client/host/server architecture, what drove the 1.0 release decision, and how MCP governance evolved from a Discord server with one seat to a Linux Foundation project with a formal spec enhancement proposal process.

If you've been building in .NET and wondering whether MCP is something you need to care about, or you've been tinkering and want to understand the production-ready path, this episode will get you there. 

Guest Bio: Mike Kistler is a Principal Program Manager at Microsoft, where he is one of the core maintainers of the official MCP C# SDK and serves on the MCP steering committee. He is also the PM for SignalR.

Additional Resources:

- MCP C# SDK documentation: https://csharp.modelcontextprotocol.io- Build your first C# MCP server: search "build your first C# MCP server" on learn.microsoft.com- MCP C# SDK on GitHub: https://github.com/modelcontextprotocol/csharp-sdk- MCP public Discord: modelcontextprotocol.io/community