Cisco DevNet introduces the MCP Description format, a static machine-readable artifact for MCP servers analogous to OpenAPI for REST APIs. The format captures tools, schemas, transports, authentication, and versioning metadata, enabling linting, breaking-change detection, changelog generation, and documentation pipelines. Two open-source tools are released: mcptoolkit-contract (CLI for dumping and diffing MCP server capabilities) and mcptoolkit-editor (a Swagger Editor-style UI for MCP Descriptions). The approach bridges the gap between MCP's runtime dynamic discovery and the static governance, documentation, and lifecycle management needs of enterprise teams.
Table of contents
MCP solves the runtime integration problemWhat API engineering taught usThe missing artifact: a versioned descriptionA familiar shape for API developersFrom description to lifecycleTooling that emerged from the workflowIntegrating MCP servers into API inventory practicesDocumentation generation for Cisco MCP serversSharing the tools with the communityClosing thoughts2.7K Impressions