MCP Server Patterns
As teams rush to wrap tools and data behind the Model Context Protocol, they keep rebuilding the same server shapes without shared names for them. This industry experience paper catalogs the recurring architectures so builders can reason about MCP servers the way software engineers reason about design patterns. ---
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Five recurring server patterns: Across fifteen independently developed servers, the authors identify Resource Gateway, Tool Orchestrator, Stateful Session Server, Proxy Aggregator, and Domain-Specific Adapter, each documented in the classic context, problem, solution, and consequences form.
Grounded in real deployments: The corpus mixes production servers from a voice AI platform with public servers from the official MCP registry, so the patterns reflect how MCP is actually built rather than how a spec imagines it.
Anti-patterns and cross-cutting concerns: Beyond the patterns, the paper flags four anti-patterns and the recurring hard parts around authentication, versioning, and observability that every serious MCP deployment eventually hits.
Why it matters: A shared vocabulary lets teams pick the right server shape on purpose, compare designs, and avoid re-deriving the same tradeoffs, which is exactly what a fast-growing protocol ecosystem needs to mature.