Context Is King: Building AI Apps with MCP & RAG
Two-day training session on Model Context Protocol (MCP) and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) facilitated by Aleksander Stensby from GritAI. This training gives you the foundation to build intelligent knowledge bases, MCP-powered applications, and improve your interaction with large language models.
This hands-on workshop will equip you with practical skills to implement your own MCP servers, clients, and MCP-enabled knowledge bases — and build interactive AI applications that connect your organizational knowledge to advanced AI models in a controlled, secure manner.
Key Topics
Day 1: Foundations — Servers & Knowledge
- Introduction to Model Context Protocol and its business applications
- Core MCP concepts: Server/client architecture, agents, resources, and tool calling
- MCPs in your development workflow
- RAG fundamentals and architecture patterns
- Hands-on exercises: Building a local MCP server and RAG pipeline
Day 2: Clients, Apps & Deployment
- MCP Apps: Creating interactive AI-powered applications
- MCP Clients: Building your own host applications
- Exposing knowledge bases through MCP
- Deployment options: Remote MCPs, Cloud providers and hosting alternatives
- Preparing for production: Security considerations and optimization strategies
- Final exercise: Building an MCP App that exposes your knowledge base
Prerequisites
- Basic Python or JavaScript programming knowledge
- Familiarity with AI/ML concepts (helpful but not required)
- Laptop with necessary development environment
This training is targeted at developers and people with a medium+ technical skill level and interest for AI.
Computer setup
Bring your laptop with your preferred IDE and either Python or Node installed. We recommend an AI-coding agent like Claude Code, Cursor or GitHub Copilot, but not required!
Bring your favorite sauce!
You need access to an LLM provider with an embedding model like OpenAI or Azure Foundry, but you can also use Ollama if you would like to run everything locally and free.
After almost two decades of leading digital transformation and building technology solutions at scale, I've embarked on a new mission: making AI a force for good by making it accessible to anyone ready to build, learn, and grow.