Contributor Communication

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

Communication Channels

All communication is governed by our Code of Conduct. We expect respectful, professional, and inclusive interactions across all channels.

Discord

The MCP Contributor Discord is for real-time contributor discussion and collaboration. The server is designed for MCP contributors and is not intended for general MCP support.

Public Channels (Default)

Purpose: Open community engagement, collaborative development, and transparent project coordination.

Primary use cases:

• SDK and tooling development (e.g., #typescript-sdk-dev, #inspector-dev)
• Working Group and Interest Group discussions (e.g., #auth-wg, #security-ig)
• Community onboarding and contribution guidance
• Community feedback and collaborative brainstorming
• Public office hours and maintainer availability

Avoid:

• MCP user support - Read official documentation and use GitHub Discussions for questions
• Service or product marketing - Keep discussions vendor-neutral; mentions of brands are discouraged except as examples relevant to the specification

Private Channels (Exceptions)

Purpose: Confidential coordination and sensitive matters. Access is restricted to designated maintainers.

Criteria for private use:

• Security incidents (CVEs, protocol vulnerabilities)
• People matters (maintainer discussions, code of conduct issues)
• Coordination requiring immediate or focused response with a limited audience
• Some channels are read-only for maintainer decision-making

Transparency requirements:

• All technical and governance decisions affecting the community must be documented in GitHub Discussions and/or Issues, labeled with notes
• Private channels are temporary “incident rooms,” not for routine development
• Some matters related to individual contributors may remain private when appropriate

Any significant discussion on Discord that leads to a potential decision or proposal must be moved to GitHub Discussion or Issue for a persistent, searchable record.

GitHub Discussions

Use for structured, long-form discussion and debate on project direction.

When to use:

• Project roadmap planning and milestone discussions
• Announcements and release communications
• Community polls and consensus-building
• Feature requests with context and rationale
• If a repository doesn’t have Discussions enabled, use GitHub Issues instead

GitHub Issues

Use for bug reports and actionable development tasks. Feature requests should go to GitHub Discussions.

When to use:

• Bug reports with reproducible steps
• Documentation improvements with specific scope
• CI/CD problems and infrastructure issues
• Release tasks and milestone tracking

Note: SEP proposals are submitted as pull requests to the seps/ directory, not as GitHub Issues. See the SEP Guidelines.

Security Issues

Do not post security issues publicly.

1. Use the private security reporting process in SECURITY.md
2. Contact Lead or Core Maintainers directly
3. Follow responsible disclosure guidelines

Decision Records

All MCP decisions are documented in public channels:

When documenting decisions, we retain as much context as possible:

• Decision makers
• Background context and motivation
• Options considered
• Rationale for chosen approach
• Implementation steps