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What Is the Most Common MCP Transport Layer for Local Development?
Understand how MCP clients and servers communicate during local development using the standard input/output (stdio) transport for direct, zero-overhead process communication.
Question
Your MCP server and client need to communicate. What’s the most common way they connect during development?
A. Through a database
B. Over the internet
C. Through standard input/output on the same machine
D. Using email
Answer
C. Through standard input/output on the same machine
Explanation
In the Model Context Protocol (MCP) architecture, the transport layer manages how clients and servers communicate, and the most common method during local development is using the Standard Input/Output (stdio) transport. This transport mechanism allows direct process-to-process communication between an MCP host (like the Claude Desktop application) and an MCP server running locally on the same machine, providing optimal performance with zero network overhead.